THE GULF 
OF ; MISUNDERSTANDING 

OR 

North and South America 
as Seen by Each Other 

TANCREDO PINOCHET 







Copyright, 1920, by 
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC, 



'tP 20 i920 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CLA597616 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ix 

CHAPTER 

I The Letters and Their Censor ... 1 

II Idealism 7 

III Democracy 30 

IV Imperialism 56 

V Black and White 91 

VI Woman's Suffrage 115 

VII Marriage and Divorce 137 

VIII Religion 163 

IX Prohibition 180 

X Education, Character and Habits . . 203 

XI Pan Americanism 230 

XII The Light of Truth 247 



m 



INTRODUCTION 

This book is neither a novel nor a didactic treatise. 
In it a woman and a man speak. The woman — so saya 
the book — ^was born and educated in Chicago, but she 
might just as well have been bom and educated in 
Buffalo, New York or Seattle. She is a woman of thia 
country. The man — so says the book — was born in 
Santiago, Chile, but he might as well have been born 
in Argentina, Colombia or Ecuador. He is a man of 
Latin America. 

The man — so says the book — wrote letters 'to his wife 
about this country. It is of no particular importance 
that these letters were addressed to his wife; they 
might have been sent to his son, to his brother, or to 
one of his friends. Or he might have talked to them on 
the subject instead of writing; or else he might have 
only thought about these matters instead of writing 
or speaking about them. Any man who has left the 
environment in which he has always lived sees things 
other than those which he has seen before, and is 
guided by a new train of thought. Whether he writes, 
utters or keeps these thoughts to himself is of no con- 
sequence. The thoughts are there. 

The woman — so says the book — is a member of the 
Censor's Department of the United States Government 
during the war. It would make no difference if she 

V 



vL INTRODUCTION 

were not. She is only a symbol, because every woman 
is a member of the body of censors in war-time and in 
time of peace, when the beliefs and moral code of her 
country are attacked. 

The woman repudiates the way of writing — or speak- 
ing, or thinking — of the representative of another race 
which is in contact with hers, and she makes her pro- 
test. According to the book, she makes her protest, in 
writing alongside what the man has written. It would 
be just the same if she had spoken or merely thought 
about it instead of writing. 

The line of thought of the man and that of the woman 
are not systematic. We do not think one day exclu- 
sively about one thing, and another day about one other 
thing, and on a third day about yet one other thing. 
We think every day about a thousand things. Just so 
did the man and the woman think on this occasion, but 
the book has classified and placed in one separate com- 
partment all that the woman and the man thought about 
each determined subject. 

Two things cannot be placed in contact without pro- 
ducing a reaction, a protest, a contention. Place a hot 
body alongside a cold body : they will contend with each 
other until they reach an agreement ; and when they are 
reconciled, if they are of the same size, the warmer body 
will have given some of its heat to the colder body until 
both have been reduced to the same temperature. 

The shock of man with man, of the races with the 
races, is much more complex, and may occur without 
immediate contact between them. Communication be- 
tween peoples is attained by mail, by commerce and by 
telegraph. 



i' 



INTRODUCTION vii 

This book is the analysis of the shock between Latin 
America and Anglo-Saxon America. The man and 
woman who are speaking here are symbols. They may 
never have seen each other. It does not matter. It 
may be that the man never came to this country, and 
that he received his impressions through books, maga- 
zines or newspapers. It may be that the woman never 
went to South America, and that she received her im- 
pressions in the same way. It all comes to the same 
thing. The two continents, the two races are in close 
contact. There is a shock, a reaction, and this book is 
the analysis of this shock, of this reaction. 

This book is the dialogue of the two continents, the 
dialogue of the two Americas. It is the report produced 
by the moral shock of two worlds. The author has 
listened to this dialogue on both slopes of the Andes 
and on both sides of the Mississippi; he has classified 
and written down the things he has heard. 



The author is indebted for the translation 
of this book from Spanish into Enghsh to 

MISS CECILIA M. BRENNAN 

and 
MR. WILLIAM SACHS 

and more especially to 

MR. CHARLES EVERS 

Editor of ''The South American" 

who, guided by the Spanish version, revised 

and polished the Enghsh text. 



THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

OR 

NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA 

AS SEEN BY EACH OTHER 



THE GULF OF 
MISUNDERSTANDING 

CHAPTER I 

THE LETTERS AND THEIR CENSOR 

NO sooner had tlie United States entered the 
European war than the necessity was seen for 
an official censorship of international corre- 
spondence. Accordingly, in New York, San Francisco 
and New Orleans, the government established offices 
authorized to examine every letter which left the coun- 
try. After the sensational discoveries which brought to 
light the cable correspondence of Count von Luxburg 
during his stay in Buenos Aires, the order was given to 
use very special care with all the letters coming from 
or going to South America. 

. Miss Mabel Jones was one of the staff charged with 
the duty of examining correspondence in the Spanish 
Department of the New York's Censor's Office. During 
her college course at the University of Chicago, Miss 
Jones had mastered the language of Cervantes; and, 
after graduation, she went to Spain for the purpose of 
continuing her studies of Latin American civilization 
and making original researches in the Royal Library of 
Madrid. In order to know well the Spanish America 

1 



2 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

of to-day, she wished to dive into the history of the 
conquest and of the colony. A great reader, Miss Jones' 
interest had been quickly aroused by reading Prescott's 
*' Conquests of Peru and Mexico," and ©later she had 
systematically read any book she could get about South 
American life. She soon became convinced that, in 
making these original investigations, she was preparing 
herself to revise ^nd correct jnuch that passes for 
knowledge with respect to these countries./ 

The daughter of wealthy parents, this work was her 
pleasure, and she had the necessary means to live and 
travel, without being hampered by the necessity of earn- 
ing her daily bread. 

After finishing her studies in Madrid, she returned 
to the United States, where she spent a year with her 
family, and then undertook a long journey through Latin 
America. She devoted much time to seeing Argentina, 
Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia 
and Mexico. A few days were spent in Eio de Janeiro 
and short trips made into the small republics of Central 
America. The only Latin American country she did 
not visit was Paraguay. 

She had now a large accumulation of notes prepared 
and classified for writing an intensive book on Spanish 
American civilization, when the European war broke out. 
The first chapters of her work were written when her 
own country declared war against Germany. She was 
then thirty-eight years old. 

Miss Jones believed herself in duty bound to devote 
all her energies to help her country. If she had been 
able to do nothing else, she would have set about knitting 
woolen garments for the Red Cross, as millions of her 
fellow-countrywomen were doing, but, to her great satis- 



THE LETTERS AND THEIB CENSOR 3 

faction, the Government accepted the offer of her services 
in the Spanish Department of the Censor's Office in 
New York. 

In this work she found ample field for her studies, as 
there passed before her, like an endless film of moving 
pictures, the ideas, the opinions and the different points 
of view of the immense number of representative South 
Americans that, as transient visitors or permanent resi- 
dents of the United States, were carrying on a corre- 
spondence with the other America. These live, intimate 
documents of a throbbing reality she found far more 
absorbing than had ever been the crumbling archives of 
the Royal Library of Madrid, in spite of all its wealth 
of data relating to days gone by. 

The reading of private letters of eminent men, which 
posterity has been able to bring to light, has proved, 
at times, to be the one technical point lacking, the. real 
key-note of interpretation in great historical moments. 
The perusal of these letters of a nameless but select 
multitude, which speaks without restrictions of present 
day life, gave access to an intimate library often denied 
to the historian and sociologist. Miss Jones was finding 
her work intensely interesting. 

Purely commercial letters did not especially attract 
her attention. Some enigmatic notes were the object 
of detailed study, and often they were allowed to pass 
as a decoy in order later to reveal a secret. Sometimes 
it turned out that they were simply love letters of girls 
whose parents had not sanctioned the correspondence, or 
of married women who had adopted a species of code 
for clandestine communication. 

One letter from a South American gentleman to his 



4 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

wife seemed of most unusual interest. It was a bitter 
criticism of men and things in the United States, a series 
of what Miss Jones mentally qualified as profoundly 
mistaken judgments. Of her own accord, and even at 
the risk of overstepping her duties in the Department, 
she determined to add to the letter, on separate sheets, 
a few observations on the opinions of the writer. She 
made copies of both the letters and of her own comments, 
to serve later as references for use in her books. 

A few days later there came to the office another 
letter from the same gentleman to the same lady, and 
again Miss Jones thought it proper to add her comment. 
These letters, written in Chicago, 111., were directed to 
Santiago, Chile, and continued to be mailed with the 
utmost regularity. Although these letters criticized ad- 
versely the United States, there was no sufficient reason 
why they should be detained by the censorship, but Miss 
Jones thought that it could do no harm, and might do 
good to add her comments to each of them. 

The Chilean gentleman and Miss Jones were unac- 
quainted, but to her the correspondent of Chicago seemed 
to be a palpitating reality. It was the soul of Latin 
America that vibrated in his letters. She now saw in 
wilting what she had heard a thousand times in her 
long journeys. This false conception of her country had 
continually tormented her. 

He wrote from his room in the Hotel Blackstone, fac- 
ing Lake Michigan, and something indefinable clouded 
the view of this observer: he could not see into the 
depths of American life, just as his eyes could not pene- 
trate the depths of the lake. Should he be given a 
diver's dress to enable him to explore the ocean of 
American life? 



THE LETTERS AND THEIR CENSOR 5 

Formerly, when she was in Buenos Aires, Rio, Santi- 
ago or Bogata, she made allowances for those who spoke 
in generalities of her country because they did not know 
it ; but here was an intelle<itual Spanish American, living 
in the heart of the country, who could see only through 
the smoked glasses of his spectacles. 

She read each letter from him with avidity. Often 
she took up her pen to reply to him, but as quickly laid 
it down again. In spite of the ill-will — which bordered 
on hatred — with which he wrote about the United 
States, she could not dislike him. 

''He does not understand," she said. ''How am I 
to make him understand ? ' ' This Chicago correspondent 
was for her the whole of Latin America in the heart 
of her country. 

""We must get to understand each other," she went 
on thinking. "We need to understand each other in 
order to fulfill our historic mission." Trained to look 
back on the long road of history, she was also capable of 
looking forward, and saw in the future a Latin America 
of two hundred million souls, prosperous, of potential 
vitality, a factor as decisive in the problems of the world 
as her country was now. Situated between Europe and 
Asia, all America would have to be a moral entity to 
figure worthily in the great conflicts of the future. 
. At last the war came to an end, and the censorship 
was abolished. The Chilean gentleman, who had brought 
with him a proposition for the investment of capital in 
the extensive copper deposits that had been discovered 
on his estates, visited California and other States of the 
Union, where his business delayed him one year longer. 

A few days before his departure for Chile, Miss Jones, 
who had heard that he was in New York, went to see 



6 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

him at his hotel in order to ask his permission to publish 
his letters to his wife with her comments added. He 
would never have allowed her to do so, if it had not 
been that he himself had modified largely his beliefs, 
owing to the opportunities he had lately enjoyed to pene- 
trate deeper into North American life, and influenced, 
as he could not fail to be, by the arguments contained in 
Miss Jones' writings, which his wife had sent him. 

' ' My first impressions were readily acquired by super- 
ficial observation," he said. ** Looking into the heart of 
things has taught me to understand this country better. 
By all means publish these letters, together with your 
illuminating replies, so that they may serve as a torch 
to others who have fallen into the same errors." 

He said much more, which, as it properly belongs 
to the epilog of this book, will be found in the last 
chapter. 



CHAPTER II 

EDEALISM 

ABOUT a week had gone by during which Miss 
Jones read the letters to Latin America in her 
office at the Censor's Bureau, when the first one 
written by the Chilean in Chicago reached her hands. 
Omitting the parts relating purely to family matters, 
the following pages are those which particularly arrested 
her attention: 

Chicago, III, ..,1918. 

My dearest: — 



I do not know whether it is because everything in 
this country is so unlike Europe, especially Paris, or 
because I have come here without you and the little 
ones, but the fact is that this North American world 
seems to me simply horrible. I don't think it will ever 
be worth while to bring you here. When the war is 
over we shall resume our visits to Paris every winter. 
i What a pity it is that this war should have diverted 
the course of Chilean travel from Europe to this country, 
though doubtless a superficial mind, judging only by 
appearances, may find real grandeur in this purely ma- 
terial triumph of the United States. I have already 
met some Chileans who are intoxicated with enthusiasm 

7 



8 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

for tills country, a disposition that may do us incalcu- 
lable harm in the future. This is the country of dollars 
and cents. Every one here is a money-maker. Business 
is the God of the country. With us the first question 
of friends when they meet is: *'How is your family?'^ 
Here the usual greeting is: *'How is business?" All 
men here are like race-horses to which the beauty of the 
grand panorama past which they run means nothing. 
They rush along unbridled, blinded by their mad haste 
to reach the goal, which is — the dollar, the mere dollar, 
the hundred dollars, the thousa'^Ld dollars, the millions, 
yes, even the billions of dolla- 

This is the country of quantity, not quality. It is the 
country of the Ingersoll one-dollar watch and of the 
three-hundred dollar Ford automobile. 

There is here a veritable cult for speed. They have 
the fastest train in the world, and until lately, they used 
to pay a forfeit to the passengers for every minute of de- 
lay in arrival at their destination. Automobiles take the 
dead at full speed to the cemetery. There are express 
elevators which take you up ten floors in one gulp. The 
shoemakers have signs on their shop fronts, offering to 
half-sole your shoes while you wait, and tailors clean 
and press your clothes as quickly. At the barber's 
shop a customer has his hair cut, his nails trimmed and 
his shoes cleaned at the same time. A Frenchman won- 
ders why Americans have not invented a machine to 
permit them to work with their feet while they speak 
over the phone. 

I have read this humorous anecdote, a mere exaggera- 
tion of the reality, in one of their magazines: Two 
insurance salesmen happened to call at the same time 
on a man to get him to take out a life-policy. He ob- 



IDEALISM 9 

jected tliat in case of his death his wife might have 
difficulty in collecting the insurance money. One of 
the salesmen told him that if he died at two o'clock ih 
the afternoon, his wife would receive the money at four. 
*'We do better than that," said the other agent; *'our 
offices are on the third floor of the building. A client 
of ours had his office on the thirteenth floor. He had 
the misfortune to fall out of his window to the street, 
and as he passed in front of our window he was handed 
a check for the amount of his insurance with our cour- 
teous expression of regret." 

f Leisure is not understood in this country. To tell an 
American that we close our offices and shops at the 
luncheon hour would be to invite him to deafen you 
with his shouts of laughter. When a man is over forty 
he is looked down upon; he is worn out and good for 
nothing. In our country women try to deceive you 
about their age ; they want to be thought younger. Here 
it is the men who lie about their age, in order to keep 
their jobs or get new ones, because money is worth more 
than men. 

You know the story of one of our countrymen who 
was drowning in the sea. Two Americans were watch- 
ing him from the shore as he struggled for life. One 
of us, directly he caught sight of the- accident, hastened 
to the rescue; but one of the Americans stopped him, 
saying: ''No, let him alone. We have made a bet: I 
say he will drown, and my friend thinks he will reach 
the shore." 

You have no idea what a world of truth there is in 
this anecdote. Money, money! That is first and last 
in this country. Cities are built solely at the call of 
moneyed propositions. Here in Chicago there is a service 



10 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

of elevated trains, carried over the streets on a hideous 
structure of steel, which makes their horrible streets 
still uglier. Why have they not made a subway like 
those of Paris, London and Buenos Aires, as they are 
immensely rich? Simply because it does not matter to 
them that the streets are ugly. The important thing 
for them is to tear through them quickly. 

Chicago is beautiful in parts, Michigan Avenue, for 
instance, where my hotel, the best in the city, is located. 
But alongside such a building as the Public Library 
one sees gross advertisements or offensive signs that call 
attention to some automobile tires or some special brand 
of pork from the packing-houses of Armour or Swift. 
As I tell you, Michigan Avenue is beautiful, but in its 
most beautiful part it is cut off by an enormous disfigur- 
ing soap factory. A Yankee monument; it takes the 
place of a piece of sculpture in the Champs Elysees. 

Weight, bulk and magnitude so dominate some super- 
ficial minds that they look upon a rigid sky-scraper of 
forty stories, built without art or grace, as a greater 
achievement than a Notre Dame, a Museum of Cluny, an 
Alhambra or a Milan Cathedral. 

The fact that men are appraised here only for their 
money is crystallized even in their language. We say: 
*'Una persona tiene un millon de pesos.'' The French 
say; '*Quelqu'un possede un million de piastres.'' The 
Germans say : * ' Der Mann hat eine Million Mark. ' ' Nat- 
urally, to possess a million dollars is something acci- 
dental, like having a house or an estate; but here they 
say of a man : ' ' He is worth a million dollars, ' ' which 
means that this is his value, the public's appraisement 
of him. He is worth as much as the number of his 
dollars. 



IDEALISM 11 

I have not yet recovered from my surprise at the 
campaign for the second war loan launched here some 
time ago, just after my arrival in Chicago. It was 
worth seeing. The highest men in office issued public 
notices such as would be published by the manager of 
the advertising department of some great patent-medi- 
cine factory. In the course of this campaign one day 
was set aside throughout the nation for the special pur- 
pose of selling bonds, and in the editorials of the ncAvs- 
papers this day was compared with that of the Cele- 
bration of Independence. Just think of it: on that 
day no battle was won, no act of heroism was recorded, 
only money was loaned to the government at a good 
rate of interest. 

To-day I passed by a store where they sell orthopedic 
goods: trusses for hernias and wooden legs and arms. 
In the window was a plaster copy of the Venus of Milo 
all disfigured by the belts to which they wished to call 
attention. Have you ever seen such an impertinence? 
The prototype of beauty, youth and health marred with 
belts and trusses for the deformed! It would not sur- 
prise me to come across an advertisement in which a 
plaster for chilblains is applied to the bare foot of some 
such a marble as that in which Chapu gave life to Joan 
of Arc. Everywhere one finds good taste sacrificed to 
business. They do not appear capable of arranging a 
window-display artistically as in Paris. I have seen 
shop windows piled two or three yards high with candies, 
nuts or button-hooks. 

Their post-card views of cities are barbarously ugly 
and daubed with the most shrieking colors. Why can 
they not produce something in this line like the French ? 
Because good taste is not marketable. There is through- 



12 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

out the country an organized school of bad taste. The 
newspapers publish in their Sunday editions a colored 
section for children, in which their elders also delight. 
These are most irritating to persons of refinement. In 
our country nothing short of a revival of the Inquisition 
to burn these papers would suffice if any one should 
publish such atrocities. 

The same is true of American music, which is rasping 
and calculated to tear the nerves. Its name describes 
it well: ragtime. Their national anthem is a proof of 
their musical poverty. Our ears, accustomed as they 
are to our own beautiful national anthem, or to the 
Marseillaise, protest indignantly against this national 
hymn of a hundred million people in North America. 

George MacManus is a talented cartoonist who con- 
tributes to one of the Chicago daily papers. The other 
day his marvelous pencil created a witticism which 
scarcely exaggerates the theme. ''Mrs. Jiggs wants you 
to play again," says Mr. Jiggs to the pianist. ''It's 
rather late, ' ' answers the musician, ' ' I fear it will annoy 
your neighbors. " "Oh! That's all right. They've got 
a dog that howls all night." 

Some one has said — in order to explain certain traits 
in the American character — that the Americans like to 
be humbugged. I think they also like to be annoyed. 
That is why they buy pianos for their girls. But, now 
and then, they get tired of it. Here is another funny 
dialog by the same artist: Mrs. Jiggs awakens her hus- 
band at midnight. "There is a burglar in the parlor,'^ 
she says. "I think he is trying to steal the piano." 
"I'll go dovrn and see," says her husband. "Don't do 
anything rash," she called after him. "Certainly not; 



IDEALISM 13 

but you don't suppose the man can get that piano out 
without help, do you ? ' ' 

Parvenus, people who have made their money sud- 
denly and who do not know how to use it, they pile up 
everywhere mountains of valuable material without art, 
without taste, and they brag of what it cost. They talk 
here, for instance, of a half million dollar production 
for a play whose setting cost all that money, a two mil- 
lion dollar building, a five million dollar hotel. 

I am writing to you from my balcony which looks 
out upon Lake Michigan. In my conception this lake 
is the most beautiful bit of Chicago. But the Yankees 
did not make the lake, they cannot call it a billion 
dollar lake, and so they have spoiled its view from the 
city by a horrible railroad with a wide expanse of iron 
rails, where a belt of smoke takes the place of a splendid 
park. 

Everything here is estimated by its value in dollars 
and cents, including love. Will you wonder when I tell 
you that a woman may prosecute a man in a court of 
justice if he has broken his promise to marry her? 
Furthermore the court estimates the amount of damage 
done to the sentiments of his client in so many thousand 
dollars; and so with a cash equivalent for her sweet- 
heart the lady is quite resigned, nay, even happy. This 
occurs so often that almost any daily paper will publish 
a report of one of these cases of breach of promise, and 
frequently the women who have taken advantage of 
such means to make capital out of their shattered illu- 
sions are wealthy, prominent women. I do not know 
that such a thing has ever occurred in any part of Latin 
America. "What happens there in these cases is that the 
bride sends back to the man who was to marry her, along 



14 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

with his love letters, any jewels or other gifts that she 
may have received from him. 

Money-makers and practical men, they have pro- 
duced no Watt or Papin to discover the force of water's 
expansion into steam, but they have had a Fulton, who 
T applied it to industrial ends. Science is not studied here 
for its own sake, but for the sake of money. To invent 
an automatic button to hold in place the collar of a shirt 
gives better money returns than to discover the laws of 
the circulation of the blood, and consequently here they 
give themselves to the task of inventing the automatic 
button that shall keep in place the shirt collar. 

Their superficial and almost always futile literary 
magazines fill three-fourths of their pages with "ads." 
The newspapers do the same. In their first page they 
boast every day of the number of columns of advertising 
published by them. A French newspaper, like Le Matin 
could not survive here. And we, unhappily, are aping 
in our country the Yankee papers. 

A materialistic people, a people whose only thought 
is of money, who dream of money, who exploit beauty, 
who make of religion a trade — later I will tell you of 
Billy Sunday and other exploiters of religion — a metal- 
ized nation which does not scruple to coin love, will not 
hesitate to trade in justice, honor, truth and all the 
most sacred of the Old World ideals, standards that 
European civilization has always kept apart from the 
consideration of dollars and cents. 



You must not be misled by the frequent news in the 
papers regarding some endowments or philanthropic 
gifts. This is "advertising;" it brings more money, it 



IDEALISM 15 

is a sound investment. Here is an item published the 
other day in one of their papers. I must borrow from 
their own humor to illustrate my statements. Of course, 
it is intended for a joke, but do not forget that American 
jests are a reflection of reality. A man, making his 
last will and testament, leaves five thousand dollars to 
each of his servants who have been with him for more 
than ten years. *'But we have no servants who have 
stayed so long as that, ' ' objects his wife. ' ' Never mind, ' ' 
replies the philanthropist, *'it will look well in the 
papers." 

With the most affectionate greetings to all, and a 
thousand kisses 

from your adoring husband, 



Miss Jones read this letter through twice. Should she 
let it go forward, or should she detain it as harmful 
propaganda to her country? Finally she made up her 
mind to leave it on her desk until the following day. 

That night, at home, she sat for hours writing a letter 
addressed to the same lady who would receive that other 
letter now lying at her office. She wrote unceasingly, 
except, when rising from her seat, she consulted a vol- 
ume on the shelves of her library. 

This is what she wrote and sent off next day inclosed 
with the letter which a woman in a far distant land 
was doubtless anxiously expecting from her husband. 

Madam : 

Something that never has happened before in my 
country has now come to pass ; our government has been 



16 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

compelled to appoint persons wliose task it is to violate 
the private correspondence to foreign countries. It has 
fallen to my lot to read what your husband has written 
you, and I must confess that what he says about my 
country astonishes me greatly. The letter is not one 
that must be intercepted by the censorship, but I venture 
to think that neither you nor your husband will take 
it amiss if I make some comment upon the impressions 
he has conveyed to you. I am ready to believe that he 
writes in all good faith, and in the same spirit I take 
the liberty to correct some of his mistaken deductions. 
Pardon me, then, this intrusion into your intimate cor- 
respondence, of which I am guilty, impelled thereto by 
an irresistible sense of justice. 

I do not think that my country can truthfully be ac- 
cused of materialism, or that it worships no other God 
than the dollar. I am convinced, on the contrary, that 
■my native land is the most idealistic in all the world, 
and that your husband has lacked both time and oppor- 
tunity to make the searching investigation required to 
warrant so dogmatic a statement. 

Let me remind you, madam, that no sooner did we 
learn of the Belgian horrors than a unanimous impulse 
was felt throughout our whole republic to lend a help- 
ing hand to the cruelly stricken kingdom, now a land 
of blighted firesides; and a squadron sailed from New 
York laden with the most substantial proofs of Ameri- 
can generosity. My country gave millions to succor the 
unfortunate in distant lands. This generous response 
to need brought about by calamity is characteristic of 
my people, v/hether in regard to misfortune within our 
own national boundaries, such as the earthquake at 
San Francisco, or in the case of far off disaster, like that 



IDEALISM 17 

of the volcanic eruption at Messina. The funds collected 
by private initiative for San Francisco amounted in an 
incredibly short time to ten million dollars, and if no 
more was sent it was because the city earnestly protested 
that no more was needed. Was this a case of material- 
ism, madam? Was this the sordid egoism of vulgar 
money-makers'? It cannot even be alleged that this 
money was contributed with a view to self-advertise- 
ment, as many of these donations were absolutely anony- 
mous. 

The spirit of giving, madam, of giving for the sake 
of others, is undoubtedly a characteristic trait of our na- 
tional soul. i\Iillionaires give part of their fortunes for 
the welfare of the community. Carnegie and Rockefeller 
are, if you like, hunters of the dollar who have amassed 
millions; but the first has given two hundred million 
dollars to establish libraries in all parts of the country, 
and the second has with forty million dollars created the 
University of Chicago, one of the most sumptuous in 
the world. And the same may be said of every American 
millionaire. Ford's peace expedition may have been 
foolish, but this was the folly of a dreamer, of an idealist, 
not that of a money-grubber. 

Yes, it might be said that he did it as a means of ad- 
vertising his automobiles, which need a world-wide 
market. Of course, madam, I do not wish to rank your 
husband with those self-appointed arbiters of human 
actions who think that a millionaire, in giving away his 
millions, always either wants advertisement or needs to 
silence his conscience. They never believe that a good 
action was done for its own sake. According to them, 
Christ was advertising Himself when He carried His own 
cross. When these cynics see a youth whispering to a 



18 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

maiden in the woods, they think a plot is being hatched 
to harm some one. The forest, the blue sky, the crystal 
brook, the youthful charm and shy gladness of the happy 
pair have no power to suggest to these parodists of 
human dreams that here is no conspiracy, but a revela- 
tion of love. 

In one decade private individuals have donated over 
one hundred million dollars for education in my country. 
In the year 1916 alone, private initiative contributed a 
thousand million dollars among us for purposes of com- 
mon welfare. Eleven out of these millions were sent to 
Belgium inside of twelve months. This year the Y. M. 
C. A. asked the country for thirty-five millions, and the 
country gave fifty millions. They are going to ask for 
much more. This year also the Red Cross opened a 
second campaign, in which the American public was 
asked for a hundred millions. In the seven days during 
which the campaign lasted one hundred and fifty mil- 
lions were received. 

This readiness to curtail private fortunes for the 
benefit of the masses is not to be found to the same ex- 
tent in any other country. Ferrero, the Italian sociol- 
ogist, who recognizes and admires this fact, says that 
this generous spirit is not apparent in Europe, com- 
posed as that continent is of highly developed countries 
where the state has taken charge of nearly all functions 
proper to the public weal ; and he reminds us that some- 
thing similar occurred in ancient Rome. The lavishing 
of private fortunes for the public benefit is characteristic 
of young countries enjoying great prosperity, he adds. 
But Argentina and Brazil are young countries of great 
material prosperity, and they do not offer a phenomenon 
analogous to that of the United States. Moreover, one 



IDEALISM 19 

of the public functions in the United States which owes 
most to private fortunes has been that of education, in 
the form of schools, universities and libraries, yet we 
must admit that the state has always been generous in 
our country for the advancement of institutions of learn- 
ing. The Public library of Chicago, with branches in 
all parts of the city, is one of the most perfect in the 
w^orld; nevertheless, private initiative has established 
there other opulent public libraries like those of New- 
berry and John Crerar. Private initiative does not 
here fill a neglected want, but supplements official en- 
terprise, a form of assistance that has been woefully 
lacking in old Europe. 

This spirit of giving is inherent in our race, in our 
people. The little child begins to learn it at the foot 
of his first Christmas tree laden with toys. Perhaps no 
other country has set apart so many days on which to 
give vent to this spirit : Christmas, New Year 's, Easter, 
Valentine's and Mother's day. If your husband would 
enter any one of the numerous flower-stores in any of 
our cities, he would see how many orders come in every 
minute for flowers to be sent from home to home as 
messages of friendsliip. Every sick person at home 
or in the hospital has his bed surrounded with flowers, 
which friends have sent him. This is much more common 
.here than in Latin America or in any other part of the 
world. 

To appreciate these traits of the gentle American 
character, it is necessary to live in this country, not in 
a hotel, transiently, but in personal contact with our 
home life. 

Nor is this spirit of generous giving the only disa- 
vowal of your husband's assertion that we are a purely 



20 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

materialistic people, engaged exclusively in the making 
of money, and capable of teaming all to account for 
sordid ends, even matters of love, honor and justice. 

You are aware, madam, how in Belgium and in north- 
ern France this dreadful war has wiped out, not only 
the population and the homes of the people, but also 
the ancient relics of art. Longwy, Louvain and Rheims 
have been destroyed, and if your husband reads the 
Chicago papers, he will have seen that in this country of 
money getters, where the meaning of beauty is not un- 
derstood, there has been formed a society, the aim of 
which is to gather together money for the reconstruction 
of such monuments of art as the Cathedral of Rheims. 
"With this object in view a considerable sum of money 
has been collected, not to repair some monument of art 
in Chicago, but to do so in cities five thousand miles 
away; and — please note this — from people who have 
seen these monuments only in photographs. 

Does this argue a purely materialistic spirit, madam, 
or the worsPiip of the dollar? 

This being so, it is not surprising that you should ask 
why Chicago is ugly, and why the people tolerate the 
existence of a hideous elevated railroad to still further 
deface the unsightly streets. You will naturally inquire 
why the Illinois Central Railroad owns a station in full 
view of beautiful Michigan Avenue that would be a dis- 
grace to a city of the lowest grade, and also why Chi- 
cago has allowed any business enterprise to rob it of its 
Lake front. Let us admit that Chicago is partially ugly, 
as are American cities in general, when compared with 
some old European cities. This has come to pass be- 
cause in this country of rapid growth the cities have de- 
veloped almost spontaneously. Buildings have had to 



IDEALISM 21 

spring up as if bidden by a magic wand, almost as a 
miners' camp grows alongside a coal, iron or copper 
mine. The men who build the first houses in such a camp 
occupy tents. The United States is a colossal nation 
still in the making, and in a measure a great part of 
the population that has arrived in millions from Europe 
still live in tents. 

Nevertheless, madam, your husband has failed to take 
into consideration how much is being done in my country 
to beautify the cities. He specially mentions Chicago, 
and it would have been worth his while to know that 
this city has spent millions and millions to make itself 
hygienic and beautiful. It unquestionably possesses to- 
day the most extensive and most beautiful park system 
in the world. And what has been done in this respect 
is only the commencement 5 billions will be spent yet. 
Mr. B. T. Ferguson alone has presented the sum of one 
million dollars for sculpture to ornament the city. If 
your husband had brought your children to Chicago, and 
if they had attended a public school, they-would have 
used text-books in which plans for a future Chicago 
are described. They would have seen the plans for a 
new station of the Illinois Central, which is to be made 
to harmonize with the new Field Museum, a magnificent 
building of marble; they would have found a design 
to reclaim the Lake front by the addition of gardens, 
transforming the city into one of the most magnificent 
on the surface of the globe. He would then have seen 
how civic pride may be awakened in the children as 
they trace the storj^ of the city beautiful, from the days 
of Athens to th-^ transformation of Paris by Baron 
Haussman. And believe me, madam, Chicago in the 
near future is going to be one of the most attractive 



22 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

cities in the universe, not only for its commercial op- 
portunities, as it is to-day, but also for its real beauty. 
Chicago will be the Paris of the future; a spirit so ex- 
quisitely refined as the sublime Parisian, Sarah Bern- 
hardt, has already said: ''I adore Chicago; it is the 
pulse of America." She was capable of understanding 
at its true value this new species of beauty, composed of 
> infinite force and exuberant virility. 

My country is devoting itself with untiring enthusi- 
asm to the decoration of everything: ports, cities, parks 
and homes. Lincoln Highway is a road which crosses the 
continent, and will be a matchless Eden, costing millions 
of dollars. In ever^^ city there are municipal committees 
and private associations for the fostering of civic art. 
Models, ideas, lines and inspiration are being imported 
from Europe; but the seal of Americanism is being 
added in every case. Your husband thinks the sky- 
scraper horrible. I find in it a special, new beauty : the 
modern obelisk of the Titans of action. The Parisians 
have in their Place de la Concorde an Egyptian obelisk, 
and to it is attributed an architectural grace sanctioned 
by centuries of existence. Our sk;y^scrapers have not 
had time to be beautified by tradition, but the very edi- 
fice of the hotel in which your husband lives in Chicago 
is worthy to figure with pride among such classical ex- 
amples of architecture as the Alhambra and Rheims 
Cathedral. 

The love of art for art's sake grows daily among us. 
When the war which has enveloped this planet first 
broke out, a battalion of our art students were to be 
found in Europe, in all the art schools of Italy, France 
and Germany. For our part, we have founded here art 
schools which will be centers of attraction for the whole 



IDEALISM 23 

world. The most famous musicians of the universe pass 
almost their whole lives among us. Chicago maintains 
two theaters for opera alone, and if it is true that my 
country has not yet given birth to many great artists 
to rival with those of the European civilization, our 
democracy is nevertheless beginning to create men and 
women of genius able to interpret the new spirit of hu- 
manity, the spirit of the new world. We are now busy 
in making that supreme work of art — democracy. We 
are cultivating human capacity in extenso. Every great 
genius of the past was, in some degree, the result of an 
intensive culture of the few at the expense of the many. 
In our country we have reached a point in the intensive 
cultivation of the many never before attempted in the 
world. Wait a little and see the flowering of this cul- 
ture. 

This, madam, explains why in my country we have 
tried to solve first the problem of quantity in the dif- 
ferent branches of industry, leaving until later those 
of quality. If the mother of ten children is ill provided 
with resources, she will rather give bread to the ten 
than pie to three, leaving the other seven with nothing. 
That is to say, if the fate of all of them interests her 
equally; but if she has favorites or accords privileges, 
she will leave seven children hungry and feast the other 
three. The opportunities impartially offered to all the 
citizens of my country have created a demand for articles 
of luxurj^ That is to say, in my country we manufac- 
ture for all, whereas in Europe the produce of labor 
is still to some extent for the privileged class exclusively. 

I Quantity is the first cry of democracy. A workman may 
possess and does possess among us property of all kinds : 

I a sewing-machine, a Victrola, a motor car, a house, just 



24 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

because we have attended to the problem of quantity in 
the first place. And this does not signify that we have 
not also advanced very rapidly with the improvement of 
quality at the same time. 

Your husband makes an accusation of materialism 
against our country for certain legal prosecutions called 
*' breach of promise" cases entered into by women who 
ask as compensation large sums of money. In this he 
does us a manifest injustice. The conduct of some of our 
women is not a characteristic trait of American women 
in general. In our nation of a hundred million inhabit- 
ants, every ordinary incident of our daily life does not 
get into the newspapers, but, of course, only what is out 
of the ordinary. One of our most famous journalists 
has said that when a dog bites a man, that is not news ; 
but when a man bites a dog, that is news. If John 
Smith, an unknown laborer of any town or city, dies 
in his bed of pneumonia or tuberculosis, the incident 
does not occupy a line of space in the local paper; but 
if John Smith, an unknown laborer, should be lifted up 
by a hurricane and deposited in fragments some twenty 
miles away, all the papers of the country would publish 
the notice of his death on the front page. So it is with 
everything. 

The tranquil happiness of hundreds of thousands of 
homes, the promises of marriage kept and those broken 
for some reason and the consequences silently endured, 
are not chronicled in the daily press. The exceptional 
case of some girl who sues for twenty, or fifty, or a 
hundred thousand dollars because a man has failed to 
keep his promise to marry her is published by the papers 
eager to dilate upon the unusual items arising out of 
our complex American life. These are really isolated 



IDEALISM 25 

cases, madam, in which women, usually of the upper 
classes, avail themselves of the ample protection which 
our laws offer them. If there were similar laws in other 
countries offering a like protection there would be plenty 
of women to take advantage of them. Without making 
too much of this one detail, I would like to add that only 
a short time ago I read in one of our newspapers of a 
young lady from Chile, of idealistic Spanish ancestry, 
who had presented herself in our courts asking a hun- 
dred thousand dollars damages in a breach of promise 
prosecution of one of my countrymen. 

Your husband says, madam, that science is not stud- 
ied here for its own sake, but for the sake of money. 
The expansive force of steam was not discovered in 
this country, but only one of its practical applications. 
Yes, madam, we are people of a practical idealism; we 
are constructive dreamers. The sanitation of Panama 
was a work of practical idealism, as was the devotion of 
the American doctor, who, in seeking means to combat 
the ravages of swamp-fever, discovered the poison-bear- 
ing mosquito, and died a victim of his idealism. .' 

The series of endowed institutions in this country, cre- 
ated for the purpose of making investigations of all 
kinds, not for business ends, not for making money, but 
to lavish it at the call of the common welfare, wou.ld fill 
.a list long enough to cover many of these pages. The 
Carnegie Institute in Washington owns forty-two mil- 
lion dollars, and the interest of this fund is used for 
scientific, geographical or purely scholastic investigation. 
The Carnegie Fund for International Peace, with ten 
million dollars, has for its object the investigation and 
economic causes of war. It has a department of edu- 
cational exchange which pays foreign professors to give 



26 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

courses in the United States. The Rockefeller Institute 
for medical investigation in New York is a center of 
inquiry into the causes of disease for its prevention and 
cure. The Russell Sage Foundation, with a fund of ten 
million dollars, has for its object the investigation and 
suppression of the cause of poverty and ignorance. I 
shall not continue, madam, to name institutions of this 
type for fear of tiring you with long, dry statistics, but 
I ask you, when you gaze at the summit of San Cristobal 
Hill in Santiago, to remember that the Astronomical 
Observatory which is there was erected and is being 
maintained by money from this country, and that our 
astronomers, who live there like hermits, studjdng the 
stars, are not exactly looking for money in the heavenly 
constellations. 

We are eager, it is true, to make money, to acquire 
wealth by means of work and effort, because money is 
the value resulting from work and effort; but at the 
same time there is in us a passion for spending this 
money more and more directly for the common welfare. 
Nowhere is the social role of money better understood 
than here ; nowhere else are more dollars made to work 
for universities, schools, libraries and settlements. The 
passion for money in my country is largely idealistic. 
This may not be so apparent in the American of the first 
generation, but it is quite true of Americans whose spirit 
has lived here for generations past. Moliere could not 
have written L'Avare here, nor could Shakespeare have 
found here a Shylock for his Merchant of Venice. 

My country materialistic! Is a people materialistic 
which has such unlimited faith in education that thej' 
take it with equal fervor to the negroes and redskins of 
America as to the Malays of the Philippines, the Latins 



IDEALISM 27 

of Porto Rico and the Esquimaux of Alaska? Can a 
nation be called materialistic which sends religious mis- 
sions to all the confines of the universe ? Are they ma- 
terialistic who would abolish the consumption of alcohol 
in spite of the wealth and influence of the liquor inter- 
ests? Can a people be called materialistic which com- 
bats vice in all its forms with untiring zeal, vigorously 
restraining a practice officially tolerated almost every- 
where else in the world, in pursuit of the idealistic 
dream to abolish the prostitution of the flesh? Is it 
materialistic to make of every immigrant unable to 
read and write a citizen with electoral rights equal to 
those of the direct descendants of the first colonists? 
Is materialistic a people which gives the suffrage to 
women, together with all those prerogatives which have 
been man 's by tradition in all the world ? 

Finally, madam, why are the United States taking 
part in this war of the old world ? Why have we aban- 
doned the traditions of the ]\Ionroe Doctrine, which de- 
mand that Europe shall not intervene in the affairs of 
the new world, offering at the same time to refrain from 
interference in old world affairs? Why send hundreds 
of thousands of citizens to shed their blood in France 
and spend billions of dollars, if not in response to a call 
of burning idealism for the defense of liberty, justice and 
"democracy in the world? Why have the millionaires 
acquiesced with smiling affability to the imposition of a 
burden amounting to sixty per cent, of their revenues 
as a contribution to the maintenance of this war in 
another continent? Why have the sons of the million- 
aires vied for places in the aviation corps, offering the 
hey-day of their youth on the altar of an ideal? 

The French philosopher, Henry Bergson, in an ad- 



28 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

dress delivered October, 1917, to tlie members of the 
American and English Eed Cross in Paris, said in part : 

**Any one of us who has crossed the Atlantic is be- 
lieved to have discovered America, and is expected to 
give an account of his discovery. Such was my case, a 
few years ago. Called upon to give an opinion of the 
American people, I told the audience that there was 
probably no country in the world where material in- 
terest was less considered, where money was less cared 
for, where the highest ideals more thoroughly and con- 
tinually penetrate and permeate every day life. Amer- 
ica, I said, is the land of idealism. The lecture was 
listened to favorably, because, over here, we have al- 
ways been fond of America; yet when it was over 
a man came up to me and said: ''I don't know your 
books, sir, but judging by the way you spoke of the 
American people, I guess that you belong, as a philoso- 
pher, to the optimistic school.' I have not met the gen- 
tleman since ; but I am perfectly sure that, seeing what 
the Americans are doing and have already done in the 
present war, he will never again venture guessing to 
what school a philosopher belongs." 

In the midst of fervent acclamation on the part of 
his fellow-citizens, President Wilson uttered these words, 
which should be graven in letters of gold in the history 
of mankind : 

**The world must be made safe for democracy. Its 
peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of 
political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We 
desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indem- 
nities for ourselves, no material compensation for the 
sacrifices we shall freely make. We shall be satisfied 
when these rights have been made as secure as the faith 
and the freedom of nations can make them. But the 
right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for 



IDEALISM 29 

things which we have always carried nearest our hearts 
— for democracy, for the right of those who submit to 
authority to have a voice in their own governments, for 
the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal 
dominion of right, by such a concert of free peoples as 
shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the 
world it^fi^-^lf at last free. To such a task we can dedicate 
our lives, and our fortunes, everything that we are and 
everything that we have, with the pride of those who 
know that the day has come when America is privileged 
to spend her blood and her might for the principles that 
gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she 
has treasured." 

I leave it to you, madam, to say whether these are 
the words of a sordid materialism, words uttered by a 
president, in a democracy, and acclaimed by a whole 
people. Does it not seem to you, madam, that Wilson 
is the poet of international politics? 

I could write m.any pages on this theme, but I think 
that what I have said will suffice to show you that we 
are not a materialistic people, mere money-grubbers. 
Rather do I think that a Cervantes is wanted to write 
a Don Quixote of the twentieth century, in which our 
country is shown gallantly fighting for high, shadowy 
ideals with such tenacity, faith and generosity and with 
such a spirit of sacrifice that will turn the distant cloud- 
land of our dreams into a radiant sun of reality. 

I beg you once again, madam, to excuse this intrusion 
in your private correspondence, but I feel sure that you 
will know how to understand and pardon me. 

Your Friend of the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER III 

DEMOCRACY 

HARDLY a week had gone by since Miss Jones 
had forwarded the foregoing letter when a new 
one from the same Chilean in Chicago to his 
wife reached her table. It was already late, and she 
was about to leave the office as she opened the envelope ; 
but such was her impatience to read the letter, that she 
took it home with her, and in her quiet, warm library, 
this was what she read : 

Chicago, 111., , 1918. 

My dearest: 



This country boasts of being the first democracy of 
the world. The classic definition of democracy here is 
that given by Lincoln at Gettysburg, ' ' A government of 
the people, by the people and for the people." It is 
largely a theoretic formula, the slogan of Roosevelt, the 
touchstone of all patriotic speeches, but it has really no 
actual existence. The truth is that those who govern 
here are a group elected by the moneyed classes and 
not by the people. It is a mere pantomime of democ- 
racy. In no other part of the world is class distinction 
so marked as it is here. The millionaires are in a class 
by themselves. There is no aristocracy of blood as in 

30 



DEMOCRACY 31 

Europe, the aristocracy that pulses through one's veins, 
an inheritance through centuries of nobility, of valor 
and of virtue from father to son through long genera- 
tions. Here they appreciate a long pedigree for horses, 
dogs, chickens and even swine, but not for men. A large 
fortune gained in the tallow industry suffices to make a 
genealogical oak spring up over night. Europe has her 
Counts, her Dukes, her Marquesses and her Princes; 
New York has her upper Four Hundred, her select 
families. The upper circle of Yankee plutocracy outdoes 
in many ways the extravagances of courtiers in the time 
of Sardanapalus, who ground up pearls and diamonds 
in their food. 

Rockefeller has a fortune of twelve hundred million 
dollars, and a yearly income of sixty millions. Ogden 
Armour, here in Chicago, has a fortune of a hundred and 
twenty-five millions, from which he derives a yearly 
income of six millions two hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. Frick earns more than eleven millions a year. 
Thirty millionaires of this country could have loaned to 
the government of their own private fortunes all the 
money collected in the Second Liberty Loan, the sum 
of three billion dollars. 

Yet the daughters of these democratic multi-million- 
aires go to the old world to win for themselves a share 
in the effete titles of European Counts, Marquesses, 
Dukes and Princes. 

It is true that to-day, because of the war and of the 
great number of men that are being sent to Europe, it 
may be said that there is abundance of work for every 
one, but none can deny that in normal times there is 
here an army of unemployed who are unable to get work 
of any kind, and are reduced to frightful poverty. 



32 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

I will cite you another one of tlie witticisms published 
in their newspapers which is, as usual, only an exaggera- 
tion of the truth: 

A man in Chicago sees a person drowning in the 
lake. His first impulse is to rush to save him, but then 
he discovers that the man struggling desperately for 
his life is a friend who occupies a position which he 
himself could fill. He thereupon leaves him to drown 
and hurries to the office where his friend had been 
working, before any one else should have time to apply 
for the position. ' ' I have come, ' ' he said to the manager, 
''to offer myself for the job held by my friend John 
Doe, who is drowning in the lake." ''You are five 
minutes late," replied the manager, "the man who 
pushed him in was here first." 

The foregoing is a mere joke and a clever one. Psy- 
chologically considered the humor consists in exaggerat- 
ing — until it becomes unbelievable — an actual truth; 
the difficulty of getting a living in America. To cap 
this I am going to tell you of an actual occurrence which 
sounds like fiction but which is a horrible reality — a 
counterpart of the preceding jest. Not long ago three 
eminent men in Chicago died suddenly after a dinner 
tliey had partaken together in a hotel. Upon examina- 
tion of the case it was discovered that they had been 
poisoned by some powder placed in their food. Further 
investigation proved that many waiters were accustomed 
to put this powder in the dishes ordered by patrons 
w^ho did not tip them. Such cases of poisoning are 
frequent. 
^ The truth of the matter is that the lower classes, in 
spite of their much advertised democracy, live here 
in more frightful misery than in any other country on 



DEMOCRACY 33 

the globe. It is enough to read books like "The Jun- 
gle ' ' and ' * King Coal ' ' of Upton Sinclair in order to get 
an idea of what poverty is like in the United States. 
Jack London, in his book, ''The Iron Heel," gives some 
idea of what life in this country will be once capital 
and labor will have met in battle array. 

And meanwhile, what means this democracy of po- 
litical oratory, of the demagogue, what means this adula- 
tion of the workers, this deception of the poor? It is 
a way of flattering them so that the blusterers may climb 
to political power. But the result will be far more 
tragic than one can foresee. The laborer has become 
arrogant, wants everything and thinks himself entitled 
to demand everything. He believes himself equal to 
the upper classes. You cannot imagine the tyranny of 
the American labor unions. They declare a strike to 
inforce the acceptance of some audacious demand which 
they have put forward, and then prevent the men from 
entering the factories until it is granted. These work- 
men forbid their employers to engage men who do not 
belong to the unions. The capitalist, the man who pro- 
vides the work, is a slave of the working man. Once 
there was a strike in the McCormick workshops in Chi- 
cago, employing thousands of workmen. The factory 
engaged through the Pinkerton agency the services of 
new men, so-called strike-breakers, who form a special 
profession in this country ; but these professionals could 
do nothing, and had, indeed, a narrow escape from a 
horrible death, because the strikers set fire to the vessel 
which was bringing them across Lake Michigan. 

Not long ago there was another strike in Evanston, 
near Chicago. In order to recommence work the fac- 
tory had to engage the services of fifty strike-breakers 



34 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

■who were compelled to live at tlie factory under the 
protection of seventy policemen. 

You can understand now what the tyranny of work- 
men intoxicated v/ith democratic ideas means. A fruit 
of this social philosophy are the "Industrial Workers 
of the World," workmen who do not speak with their 
tongues but with bombs of dynamite with which they 
daily succeed in terrorizing this country. There are at 
present under indictment a hundred and twelve of these 
Industrial Workers, who are accused en masse of fo- 
menting dynamite outrages and treason. 

All this is the result of the famous Yankee democracy, 
that will probably bring in its wake a catastrophe like 
that of the Bolsheviki in Russia. There it has been 
shown quite convincingly what a government, "of the 
people, by the people and for the people," really is, 
namely, chaos and the appointment of ignorant laborers 
as Secretaries of Finance. This may come to pass any 
day in this country that maintains its social organization 
as by a miracle in a tottering balance. 

Not because the United States can boast so far of a 
material triumph can we admit that they have succeeded 
as a democracy. The success of a country is proven by 
the record of centuries. To-day one chapter suffices to 
tell of the grandeur and fall of Rome. Men count their 
lives by years, but nations count theirs by generations. 
The United States of America has only begun to live, 
and as yet cannot speak of any really definite triumph. 
This democracy is only an experiment, and runs the 
risk of those who experiment in laboratories with un- 
known explosives. 

I think that this government of an anonymous, irre- 
sponsible multitude is an absurdity. They do not even 



DEMOCEAGY 35 

know what is good for them. This nation represents 
an experiment in democracy, the result of which is going 
to be tragic. Up to the present it has sncceeded because 
it has never been a democracy in reality, but only a 
democracy in theory. 

How different things are in Germany,* where, never- 
theless, the workman lives better than in any other 
country, though he is not flattered nor permitted any 
undue interference in the election of his governors. 
There government is by the upper classes, which are 
the most capable in any country; there the social hier- 
archy is respected, and they have the courage to recog- 
nize the value of caste, inherently superior by virtue of 
its antecedents. Here, as in our own country, they lack 
the courage necessary to proclaim openly the superior 
inherited ability of the higher classes, though we cannot 
deny that they possess all the sterling virtues of the 
human race. 

And it is from here, from the United States, that the 
new current of democratic ideas has gone to Chile; ideas 
that have infected our people, constituting one of the 
most serious dangers that threaten us for the future. 
We owe our progress and our order to the traditional 
regime of our country, by means of which the intelligent 
classes hold permanent control of the government as in 
Germany. 

It is not, as you well know, that I am a German sym- 
pathizer in the present war. The Germans are entirely 
too ambitious and aim at world control. It is proper 
that all the world should be on guard to show that it 
has no intention of being so dominated ; but we have to 

* This letter is supposed to have been written when Germany was 
at the high water mark of its military achievements. 



36 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

admit that Germany is the most efficient nation of the 
globe, exactly because there the most efficient classes 
rule without hindrance. 

p\ The basic idea of democracy is against the law of 
nature. Society is a living organism, the individuals 
composing which are equivalent to the cells of an indi- 
vidual organism like that of man. 

It is impossible to imagine the cells of the feet di- 
recting the whole structure of the human body; it is 
the cells of the brain which tell the feet where they are 
to go. In a social organism the upper classes constitute 
the brain of the nation, and this it is that should de^ 
termine the destiny of the people and dictate the regu- 
lations to which they must submit. In nature liquids 
occupy the place which corresponds to their density; 

-> mercury cannot be made to float on water. Men also 
occupy in society the place in which they belong ac- 
cording to their merit, and this merit is hereditary. 

In Germany, the worth of an electoral vote is in ac- 
cordance with the individual merit of the elector in 
question. The vote of a man of high rank has, natu- 
rally, greater weight. This is logical and just ; it is an 
advantage to the nation. In our country, although we 
had the weakness to adopt in theory the principles of 

> the French Revolution, we have had the common sense 
not to accept such a dangerous policy in reality, and our 
electoral votes count in accordance with the wealth 
of each elector. The vote of one who can purchase the 
greatest number of votes is worth the most. This has 
saved us. If our people had conducted their own elec- 
tions with this so-called democratic freedom we should 
have failed utterly as a nation. There they declaim 
against bribery as a salute to the flag of democratic prin- 



DEMOCRACY 37 

ciples; but no politician of any party, except labor, 
wishes sincerely to see any change in the reality of onr 
electoral system. 

Here in the United States there is an increasingly 
ardent desire to place the government in the hands of 
the people. The jndges are elected by popular vote, 
in some States they may even be impeached by a peti- 
tion drawn up by the same electors, a prerogative which 
is entitled the "recall." A proof, however, that faith 
in this system of popular election is not absolute is 
shown by the fact that Judges of the Supreme Court 
are not chosen by the popular vote. On the contrary, 
they receive their appointment directly from the gov- 
ernment, as in our country. 

Another most extraordinary democratic right of the 
common people in many States of the Union are the pro- 
ceedings called ''initiative and referendum." This ac- 
tually permits them to make laws directly. It means that 
a certain number of voters may present for the popular 
vote any private petition that has in no way been in- 
stigated by the authorities elected by the people. A 
municipal candidate, or a candidate for the legislature, 
may have been elected on a definite political platform, 
with a definite program to carry out. If in any way 
he breaks faith with the terms of this program, or de- 
• parts from his political platform, he can be impeached 
by the same will that put him in office: the popular 
vote. It may happen sometimes that he has conducted 
himself according to the terms of his platform but that 
those who had elected him had seen fit to change their 
minds about some certain topic. These voters, in a 
group whose number is determined by law, may petition 
that this or that legal project be submitted to ballot. 



38 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Not long ago in Chicago tliey secured abont one hundred 
and fifty thousand signatures to a petition that it be 
decided by a popular vote whether Chicago should or 
should not be a prohibition city. In order to put this 
question to popular vote there were needed the signa- 
tures of only one hundred and six thousand five hundred 
voters. If this project had become law, as has happened 
in so many other States, it would have been an example 
of legislation initiated directly by the people. A law 
dictated by the State Congress may, by means of the 
referendum, be submitted to the popular vote, that is 
to say, the people may veto the decisions of the legis- 
lators. I do not think that this could ever come to pass 
in our country, and alas for us if it should ! 

It would take too long to explain this to you in de- 
tail, but the sum and substance of it is this : A maximum 
of power is given to the people, not only to elect its 
representatives and to recall them before they finish 
their term, but also to instigate direct legislation, some- 
times in opposition to the will of the very persons whom 
the popular vote has placed in office. Moreover, the 
franchise, or right to vote, is as widely extended as pos- 
sible, and includes the women in a great many States, 
a condition that will soon exist in all parts of the coun- 
try. Some day, perhaps, the animals and plants will 
vote as well ! Soldiers can vote, and just now they are 
taking steps to enable those who are actually in the 
trenches in Europe to exercise this right of American 
citizenship. It will not surprise me if there should come 
a day when American warships will send home the votes 
of their crews by wireless from all the seas. 

What most particularly impresses me in the barefaced 
deception of this pretended democratic system of gov- 



DEMOCRACY 39 

ernment of the people, by the people and for the people 
is the fact that the "people," the multitude, neither 
thinks nor wishes nor cares for anything in which it 
is not directly interested. It allows itself to be swayed 
unconsciously in affairs of common or collective interest. 
A few leaders tak^ charge of a project and organize the 
respective propaganda. "When I tell you that there 
have been secured a hundred and fifty thousand signa- 
tures to the petition which would make of Chicago a 
prohibition city, do not imagine for a moment that a 
hundred and fifty thousand persons have come forward 
voluntarily to sign this petition. Nothing of the sort. 
It has been taken from house to house, from office to 
office by solicitors pleading for signatures and seeking to 
convince the voters just as merchandise is offered for 
sale by traveling salesmen. The petition is not a re- 
flection of the collective will of the people, but of the 
will of a small group that knows how to drag in its 
train an unthinking mob. It is just this that saves for 
the present the democratic regime of the country. 

It is already apparent here in Chicago that the Social- 
ists are gaining ground, and, in order to beat them at 
the last election of Judges for Cook County, the Re- 
publicans and Democrats, the two traditional parties of 
the country, had to join forces against them. One need 
not be unusually penetrating to see that the Democrats 
and Eepublicans in the future will unite into one party 
representing the interests of capital, in order to combat 
the ever growing Socialist party representing the endless 
exactions of the working class. And after them will 
come the Bolsheviki, the nihilists, the anarchists, the 
iconoclasts of civilization. There will be no other means 
of saving the situation than that of dictating a new law 



40 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

to curtail the voting power of tlie lower elements of 
society, for otherwise there must come the downfall of 
the present organization. And this curtailment will be 
the denial of the democratic theory, of a government of 
the people, by the people and for the people. Even now 
there are editorials in the most prominent newspapers 
that advocate the idea of placing more obstacles in the 
w^ay of the suffrage of the naturalized foreigner; and in 
other articles of the public press it is even claimed that 
the Socialists should be denied the right to vote. 

Eadical measures like this will have to be taken, in 
this country and in all "the world, because if it is really 
true that this is now only nominally *^a government of 
the people and by the people," at the rate at which 
things are going, with the development of the labor 
unions, it might become a real government of the com- 
mon people, which will be as exacting as the Soviets of 
the Russian Bolsheviki. 

In all that I have told you, you can see to what ex- 
tremes is carried this democracy that we foolishly ac- 
cept in theory and wisely repudiate in prastice. In 
our country no one speaks of this openly in the news- 
papers nor in the magazines nor in books; no one has 
dared frankly to come to the defense of the aristocracy, 
and we must needs feign reverence for this democratic 
chorus in which the world now lifts its voice. This is 
one of the most outrageous conventional falsehoods of 
which our new civilization is guilty. Germany is the 
only country that has preferred not to lie, but has had 
the courage to defend the doctrine of an aristocracy, 
to fight and shed blood in its cause; and, consequently, 
that country is the most efficient in all the world, in 
science, arts, industry and strength, so much so that 



DEMOCBAGY 41 

Germany, in the intoxication of its triumph, has wished 
to rule the world. There is only one other example of 
this type on the whole planet : Japan. These are strong 
countries and their strength is that of their ablest men. 
The United States also has its super men, but they are 
surrendering their power, abandoning their prerogatives 
end avoiding their responsibility. It is a renunciation. 
That is what democracy signifies, the renunciation of 
the fit and the advent of the unfit. 

But I have already talked too much, my dear one, 
of the affairs of this country, and very little of our 
private affairs, I ought «to 



Your husband who adores you. 



No sooner had Miss Jones finished reading this than 
she started to write the answer. There was no time to 
finish that night, and on the following day she had to 
go to the Public Library to look up some items which 
she could not find in her own librarj^ Her supplemen- 
tary notes finally took shape in these words: 

]\Iadam : 

Since I took the liberty to make a few observations 
on your husband's former letter, it may not seem strange 
that I do the same with this. The letter that goes to you 
by this mail arouses in me as many, if not more, objec- 
tions than the last. 

Yes, madam, your husband is right, we are a national 



42 TEE GULF OF MISUNDEBSTANDING 

experiment in democracy, but it is an experiment in 
which the country has an immense faith, a faith that is 
almost religions. We have faith in a government of 
the people, for the people and by the people. Yf e believe 
that every man and every woman should have freedom 
to govern him or herself personally as best it suits them 
within the limitations that the rights of others impose; 
but we do not believe that those in office have the right 
to govern us as they please, in contradiction to the will 
of the gOA^erned. 

"When our nation had just awakened to independent 
life it was thought to make of it a monarchy, and to 
Washington was offered a royal crown, but the spirit of 
liberty which had impelled the first colonists to America 
brought about the triumph of the Republic. The history 
of our political development, first with its ''congres- 
sional caucus" (oligarchy, the election of the candidates 
for the presidency of the republic in private conferences 
between congressmen) afterwards with political conven- 
tions, and finally with the popular liberty more freely 
expressed to-day, show that we are rapidly making of 
our country a democracy in action, not in theory alone, 
as your husband says. 

We do not believe, madam, in the divine right of 
authority. We believe that the authority to govern a 
people comes from the will of that same people. Neither 
do we believe in the prerogatives of a governing class, 
in an aristocratic regime. As your husband says, we 
appreciate the value of a pedigree in horses, cows, 
chickens and hogs, but not in men. Madam, if you have 
a prize chicken farm or a horse-breeding establishment, 
you subject all your best stock, which you desire to im- 
prove and perpetuate, to very special conditions of 



DEMOCBACY 43 

feeding and propagation, and you are constantly seeking 
to improve the race which is your specialty. With the 
human race nothing of the kind is possible. The son of 
a magnate, lacking the urgent need to work that made 
his progenitors rich and powerful, and surrounded by 
comforts and luxuries, is exposed to the danger that 
instead of cultivating and improving the virtues that 
should be his by right of inheritance, he is very apt to 
acquire vices unknown to his ancestors. If this rich 
man 's son should conserve and perfect the sterling quali- 
ties of his forebears, he will enjoy, in a democratic so- 
ciety, all the prerogatives of his parents in open com- 
petition with others as able as he, whether they are heirs 
of superior men, or sons of men of humble origin who in 
the rude school of life have fashioned their characters 
and acquired qualities essential to social and economic 
success. 

Napoleon II has no claim to the admiration of the 
world although he happened to be the son of Napoleon 
I, and Abraham Lincoln is revered by humanity al- 
though his father was a carpenter who could not read 
or write when he married. We believe every man to 
be the architect of his own character, the sculptor of 
his own monument, and we strive to keep the social 
structure such that the survival of the fit shall be real- 
ized as easily as the downfall of the unfit. We believe 
thaf the greatest riches a country possesses are its own 
citizens, and we likewise believe in giving to each and 
GYery one of these the best possible chance to develop 
their personality. We have faith in what a broad educa- 
tion will do, and we wish to place it within the reach 
of every man in order to permit him to develop his 
powers to their utmost. It is also part of our social 



44 TEE GULF OF MI8UNDEESTANDING 

creed that talents sliould find easy and automatic means 
to place themselves in the setting which they deserve, in 
order that they may render the greatest possible service 
to the community. What would it have availed our 
country if Edison had continued selling newspapers to 
railroad passengers? It is much better that he should 
have the management of his present large fortune, and 
of his laboratory at Menlo Park, where he can produce 
more, not only for himself, but for the common good. 

We do not yet know enough about biology to deter- 
mine whether individual organisms are democratic or 
aristocratic, but we do Imow that human society is more 
complex than the human individual, because its constit- 
uent cells are more complex, and it is therefore not 
logical for your husband to say that the basic idea of 
democracy is against the law of nature. 

Democracy is a question of social justice, but it is 
also a question of social convenience, of social advantage. 
A democratic organization is the most adequate human 
organization for the most intense utilization of all the 
resources of mankind, that is to say of the material, the 
intellectual and the moral opportunities that are his 
dower. 

A democratic organization means, in the first place, 
an equality of opportunity for all. You have seen, no 
doubt, in your own country, the condor spreading out 
its majestic wings high over the peaks of the Andes, 
free and powerful, covering great distances in its rapid 
flight; and you may have seen, in the Zoological gar- 
dens, the same condor, apparently free, without a fetter 
to impede his soaring to the heights. Why does not the 
latter also fly? Why is he dejected and sad? His wings 
are there, entire ; the sky is there, free and open, but the 



DEMOCRACY 45 

gratings that limit his enclosure do not permit him to 
make the running start necessary for his flight. Man 
laughs at his great wings. The condor seems to be 
free, but he is not. Thus, the man who has not had his 
chance at a public school — that wide arena where the 
first unfettered trials are made to prepare for the real 
race of lif" — seems to be free, all his limbs are whole 
and sound; he has the wide world before him for his 
flight, but . . . his freedom is derisory, he is a prisoner 
like the condor. 

This equality of opportunity exists in my country 
on an ever increasing scale. It exists on a larger scale 
than in any other country of the world. The term 
*' self-made man" has passed from the English to all 
modem languages. The *^ self-made man" is a product 
as American as the pineapple is Brazilian. In the presi- 
dency of the Republic, among the secretaries of state, 
in Congress, in the judicial career, in industry, in com- 
merce, in the army, in the navy^ in all human activities, 
you may see children of unknown fathers, messengers, 
even newsboys as they arrive at maturity become lead- 
ers in some branch of activity. These same boys would 
not have been able to rise in the same way in any anti- 
democratic country, because *' self-made man" does not 
mean made by himself alone, without the help of so- 
ciety, but formed by himself with the help of society, and 
without the help of the special privileges that in other 
countries involve the inheritance of a more or less 
considerable fortune. Society helps with its public 
schools, its night-schools, its Sunday schools, its libraries, 
its free lecture courses, its museums, its art galleries, 
its churches, its settlements; that is to say, society has, 
in a democratic regime, hundreds and thousands of 



46 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

tentacles that go reacliing out into the remotest confines 
of the nation striving to touch as by a magic wand 
every brain and every heart. For each there is a ladder 
by which he may reach the heights appropriate to his 
capacity now developed to its greatest extent by these 
social agents with which, whether or not he wills it, he 
is, nevertheless, placed in contact every day of his life. 

This secures to society a constant renewal 6i its di- 
recting elements. It does not mean the renunciation of 
the fit and the advent of the unfit, as your husband 
believes, but the elimination of the unfit and the advent 
of the fit. In your country, the presidency of the Re- 
public has been generally in the hands of a few privi- 
leged families, that is to say, within a republican consti- 
tution there has been perpetuated a European aristo- 
cratic regime. This is not the case with us. We have 
never had both father and son elected to the presidency. 
Neither the fame nor the ability of the father secures 
the future welfare of the son; in each generation all 
enter the race on equal conditions. I do not pretend to 
say that this is the invariable rule in oar country now, 
but it is the tendency of our evolution, and has been since 
the beginning of our history. 

Not long since, madam, the University of Wisconsin 
celebrated its fiftieth anniversary^ There were present 
four of the former Presidents of the University. One 
of them, ex-President Northrop, pronounced these w^ords 
which illustrate my thought verj^ clearly : ' ' The utility 
of the University is not limited to the great men it 
forms. The utility of the public school is not measured 
by the number of exceptionally able men that have 
studied in it, but in the general betterment of the multi- 
tude. If we can make the sum total of our citizens fifty 



VEMOCBACY 47 

per cent more capable, it is much better than to make 
some of them a hundred per cent more capable, while 
the multitude has not been appreciably improved. The 
ideal of democracy is to make the multitude intelligent, 
not to form a few intelligent leaders and leave the com- 
mon people in obscurity. We need intelligent leaders, 
but we also need an intelligent people, able to follow 
those leaders." 

The above does not imply the suppression of social 
divisions, as these are not in themselves a negation of 
democracy. We consider the public school a democratic 
ideal because there all have a common basis upon which 
to begin — one and the same platform from which to 
make the start of life's flight. This does not mean, 
however, that a democratic regime obliges the person 
of culture to live with illiterates, or the millionaire with 
the pauper, though their doing so is not prohibited or 
even censured; it signifies merely that the illiterate has 
every facility to make himself a man of culture and the 
beggar a like chance to become a millionaire. There 
are select circles, and separate groups, but the doors 
that lead to them stand wide open to him who wishes 
to pay his entrance fee in effort, talent, perseverance and 
honesty. Democracy is not equality among men, but 
equal opportunities for all men. Democracy does not 
mean the leveling of mankind to an average standard, 
but the bringing of opportunities to a level that all can 
reach. 

Your husband may say when commenting on the 
power of our millionaires that this equality of chance 
is only a hollow phrase beside the privileges of an ac- 
quired fortune. Let us see. 

He speaks of the enormous fortunes of this country. 



48 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

There are sucli, it is tme. John D. Eockefeller has a 
fortune of twelve hundred million dollars, and many 
others follow closely after. Doubtless, unjust social 
conditions have made these extraordinary accumulations 
possible. But, madam, have you any idea of the amount 
to which this private fortune is assessed for public 
revenue? Rockefeller's annual income amounts to sixty 
million dollars and his taxes to forty millions. The 
present tax — a war tax, it is true, but likely to remain 
at little less than his ratio — provides that all incomes 
exceeding two million dollars shall pay sixty-three per 
cent to the state. It is one of the great checks to the 
undue privileges of capital. The additional taxes on 
income now in force are progressive. 

These undue prerogatives of capital are moreover 
subjected to limitation by our democracy in many dif- 
ferent ways, such as by the laws that regulate trusts, 
income and inheritance taxes, and by other methods 
which each new social period proceeds to formulate. 
William Kent, a millionaire and a member of the Tax 
Committee, has recently expressed his opinion with re- 
spect to this problem in the following words: ^' There 
should not exist such employments as footmen, butlers or 
chauffeurs. Men of fortune retain a gTeat number of 
persons employed in these positions of luxury. I 
would like to see," added this millionaire, '4he income 
tax so high that this class of employees could not be 
retained hy wealthy families." 

"We do not fear at all what your husband sees fit to 
call the undue pretensions of the working man. We firmly 
believe that the working man will continue to secure 
higher wages and shorter hours of work, partly as a 
measure of social justice and partly as a dictate of social 



DEMOCEACY 49 

seliisliiiess, because society needs that all its members 
sliould liave an equal opportunity to develop personality 
to its higbest, a thing that is impossible under actual 
conditions of industrial servitude. We must face the 
inevitable, madam, that the crowbar, the plane, the brace 
and bit, the furnace and the lathe are all taking on the 
•majestic proportions of heraldic escutcheons, of the 
royal crowns. Only yesterday we read how our dele- 
gation of working men was received in the palace of the 
King and Queen of England and feasted by the highest 
dignitaries of the United Kingdom. 

No, we are not afraid, we are not troubled as we note 
this evolution. On the contrary, we have enthusiastic- 
ally gone out to meet it that we may help it. Even our 
wealthy magnates understand the transformation and 
comment upon it without becoming alarmed. Do you 
know what one of the best known millionaires of the 
U. S. A. says in regard to this? This steel king, Mr. 
Charles M. Schwab, is president of the Bethlehem Steel 
Company, which exploits the iron of El Tofo in your 
o-wn Chile, the company which has built on that far 
off coast the port of Cruz Grande, and which is trans- 
porting a mountain of iron from your countrj^ to mine. 
The company of which Mr. Schwab is president em- 
ploys a hundred thousand workingmen and pays in 
wages twelve million dollars monthly. It signifies that 
economically speaking, the word of such a mxan has 
weight, and it has also great weight politically speaking, 
as not long since Mr. Schwab was Chairman of the 
Board controlling the construction of ships for our 
government. This man uttered these words when not 
yet an employee of the government at a salary of one 
dollar a year: "A¥e are on the threshold of a new 



50 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

era. The new order of things is going to be hard for 
many of us and it will come sooner than we were ex- 
pecting. It means a social rebirth of all the world. 
Some call it socialism. Others call it Bolshevism. What 
it means is this: The man that works with his hands, 
the man that does not possess riches is he who will rule 
the business of the world, not only in Russia and Ger- 
many and the U. S. A., but literally throughout the 
world. This great change will be a social adjustment. 
I repeat that it is going to be hard for those who possess 
a large part of the capital, but in the end it will prob- 
ably be beneficial for all of us; and so we ought not to 
oppose this movement without informing ourselves re- 
garding its dominant ideas. I have no wish to lose the 
money I possess. The more money a man has the more 
he wishes to have. The change from the old to the new 
order of things will be steady but rapid. The aristoc- 
racy of the future will not be the aristocracy of riches. 
It will be the aristocracy of those who have done some- 
thing for their country and for the world." 

You see, madam, that even the owners of great for- 
tunes do not entertain much fear of the social evolu- 
tion that inspires your husband with so much dread. 
As for the extravagance of our millionaires to which 
your husband alludes, frankly, I think it is very much 
exaggerated. I believe that, in comparison with mil- 
lionaires of other countries, what most distinguishes 
the American is their cheerful readiness to give away 
their millions in works destined for the benefit of the 
whole people. 

The same Mr. Schwab, not long ago, in Chicago, where 
he was speaking as Director General of the Shipping 
Board, related a very telling story: Going with Mr. 



DEMOCRACY 51 

Carnegie to inaugurate a library and an auditorium, 
gifts which Mr, Carnegie and he were making to the 
University of Pennsylvania, he went to his room to 
dress for the ceremony, and found his valet desperately 
hunting under the bed for a collar-button, "I am 
leaving your service," said the indignant man to his 
employer. ^'You and Mr. Carnegie come here to give 
away millions, but you are the owner of only one collar- 
button, which I have dropped on the floor and cannot 
find." 

While Mr. Schwab was making his speech, his wife 
was in the hotel knitting woolen clothing to send to the 
soldiers in the trenches. This is where I must tell you 
that there is much exaggeration in the general belief 
that the daughters of our millionaires lose their heads 
over European princes. Naturally, some cases of this 
kind occur among the thousands of millionaires' fami- 
lies, and they are given so much publicity that the in- 
experienced observer very frequently makes a mistaken 
generalization. 

Riches have their privileges^ madam. How could it 
be otherwise? But the tendency in our democracy 
is to see to it that these privileges of fortune shall be 
only equal to the strength and the intelligence em- 
ployed in acquiring them. Thus, an arrow can fly 
through the air only in proportion as we have bent 
the bow to shoot it. A slight flexion of the bow and 
'the arrow makes a short flight. "We bend the bow 
with force and the flight is long. In human life, a 
democracy disposes of existence in such a way that no 
one is ?ble to shoot his arrow farther than the force 
used in bending the bow will permit him. 

Your husband, madam, gives a very synthetic de- 



52 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

scription of our electoral system, and he seems to see 
a national peril in our faith in a "government of the 
people, for the people and by the people." He believes 
that the puffed up working man will become a destroyer 
of society. AVe do not believe that this ample liberty 
for the workingman to impose his ideas in the election 
booths need bring dangerous results to the country. 
On the contrary, this is the legal way gradually to 
change our social organization already so greatly modi- 
fied in the course of our history. This is the way in 
which the aspirations of all our citizens are tried out 
openly and the reason why those of the majority succeed. 
This is the safety valve of the machine of progress. The 
violent revolutions and counter revolutions in Russia are 
a consequence of the traditional oppression of the work- 
ingman in the domain of an aristocrac}^ If Russia had 
had a half century of democratic organization, it would 
not have fallen into the present chaotic condition that 
your husband condemns. We do not know as yet what 
will be the end of Russia, but if it should find the path of 
democracy while struggling desperately in the darkness 
to find its destiny, Russia will stagger the world with its 
progress. 

The suggestion that your husband has seen in some 
of our newspapers that we should suppress the right of 
the socialist to vote does not entitle him to accept this 
idea as representative of a tendency of our thought. 
You will see, madam, in our daily papers, in our maga- 
zines, in public speeches and in books the most out- 
rageous and contradictory ideas. This is only one of 
the manifestations of our democracy, in which every- 
body thinks himself authorized to express his opinions, 
whatever they may be. In other countries the pro- 



DEMOCJRACY 53 

fessicn of thinking and expressing opinions is restricted 
to the educated classes, or to those who make their liv- 
ing with their pen. Here every one says what he thinks, 
and, as is natural, some perfectly preposterous opinions 
are expressed. The observer who studies our country 
should not forget that this is a trait of our national 
idiosyncrasy, or his comments will contain many mis- 
taken inferences. 

This free expression of the opinion of all is a demo- 
cratic school. In our schools public speech is a branch 
-of the usual course of study, not a luxury, but simply 
a means to enable every one to express his opinion pub- 
licly without self -consciousness. If errors come to light, 
it matters as little as if a boy does his school task wrong 
in the class or makes a mistake in his manual training 
work. It serves as a step onward to better things. Each 
day we see incorporated more new elements into the 
realm of citizenship, and from the most humble ranks 
there rise up men who turn out to be torchbearers in 
their different walks of life. 

Unquestionably there is in my country still much ig- 
norance and much poverty to be reclaimed. Your hus- 
band asks you to read Upton Sinclair's books to get 
an idea of the poverty among the working classes. This 
pauperism is found chiefly among the European immi- 
grants who have not as yet adapted themselves to our 
democracy. We have in our country, that receives this 
immense European immigration, more than five mil- 
lions who cannot yet speak our language. In Chicago 
alone, madam, the city from which your husband WTites, 
my own native city, one-third of its inhabitants are 
foreigners ; another third is composed of sons of foreign- 



54 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

ers, and of the other third, a third part have either 
father or mother a foreigner. We are building up our 
den3ocracy of foreign materials ; we are making a monu- 
ment out of clay brought from across the sea. 

To study the living conditions of our workingman one 
should not choose as a type the recently arrived immi- 
grant, who has not had as yet the time to adapt himself 
to our ways; but any one who travels a little in our 
country, and will take the time to visit the homes of 
American workmen, will find carpenters, mechanics, 
painters and workingmen of all the industries living in 
their own houses, with one or two baths, with parlors, 
pianos and libraries, and more comforts than those of 
the middle-class of a generation ago. This is not the 
rule as yet, but it tends to become more so every day. 

I do not believe, madam, that the happiest working 
classes are to be found in Germany, as your husband 
says. They have been systematically trained into being 
submissive automata. They have no such opportunities 
as the workingmen in the United States, where every day 
one sees men of the humblest origin rising to social, 
scientific, economic and political heights. As our ex- 
ambassador Mr. Gerard says: ''In Germany all the 
higher offices are held by the members of the Prussian 
nobility. Germany is still the country of great land- 
holders. Laws that have been abolished for years in 
England, still exist in Germany to permit these enor- 
mous estates to pass from one generation to another 
without being divided up. The workingmen of German 
cities work longer hours and earn less than in any other 
part of the world. More than fifty-five per cent of 
the families in Berlin live in one room. ' ' I have quoted 
this to you, madam, merely to answer the expressed 



DEMOCBACY 55 

belief of your husband that an oligarchy insures the 
greater well-being to the workingman. It will not be 
necessary to add that in the countries of Latin America 
the condition of the workingman is infinitely inferior. 

I do not pretend that we have reached perfection. 
Far from it. Our country is a democracy in the making 
and, as in all works of construction, it presents still, 
alongside the parts already made and finished, crude 
material, stone, sand and lime, in formless piles. When 
an artist is fashioning a piece of sculpture, you will see 
by the side of the work in course of creation, masses 
of shapeless clay as yet nothing but a lump of common 
earth. Maybe the head is finished; maybe the soul is 
already there, but we shall not be able to appreciate the 
beauty of the composition until the whole is finished. 
It is not right to judge the work by the formless mass 
of clay that has not yet taken on the lines the artist 
means to give it. The construction of a democracy 
is a far more laborious piece of work than the pro- 
duction of the finest masterpiece of the most gifted 
artist; there must be formless masses of material while 
the work is in progress, and of this mere clay no one 
can judge until it has been given the breath of life. 
In our democracy only the first blows of the chisel have 
made their mark. Let us not be so superficial as to 
condemn the work in preparation because it has not 
yet received the last finishing touches. Let us wait and 
help to give life to the monument that is the work of 
our hands, of our brain and of our heart. 

Very sincerely. 
Your Friend from the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER IV 

IMPERIALISM 

MISS JONES now looked for these letters from 
Chicago with the same interest with which she 
expected her own private correspondence; and 
although their contents naturally hurt her feelings, it 
cannot be denied that she vehemently desired to read 
the letters because they expressed so well what Latin 
Americans in general were thinking about her country. 
One morning she noticed at once the elegant and ener- 
getic handwriting of the Chicago correspondent among 
the heap of letters piled up on her desk. That morning 
Miss Jones did very little work in her office. Reading 
and meditating upon this long letter took up all her 
time until the luncheon hour. The letter was as fol- 
lows : 

• Chicago, 111., , 1918. 

JMy Dear One : — 



One frequently sees it stated in the newspapers of this 
country that a democracy offers guarantees of peace to 
the world, whereas an aristocracy is a threat of war to 
all humanity; that it is necessary, therefore, to conquer 
Germany in order to make democracy safe and give peace 
to the world. I cannot see upon what this assertion could 

56 



IMPERIALISM 57 

logically be based. The United States boasts of being 
a democracy, and bas, nevertlieless, waged war against 
Mexico for the purpose of seizing her northern provinces ; 
it has made war against Spain to get possession of Puerto 
Rico and the Philippines, and upon Colombia to seize 
Panama. In less than a century they have annexed, by 
right of conquest, a million square miles of what was 
formerly Latin American territory. 

Among these conquests are the taking of Texas and of 
sixjmore States that were Mexican possessions before the 
American invasion, which was pushed even to the ancient 
Aztec capital. This was the imposition of the southern 
slave States. Those seven States, in which there was 
no slavery, were taken precisely so that slavery might 
be established in them, thus degrading them socially in 
order to secure a larger representation from the southern 
States as partisans of slavery in the Federal Congress. 

This policy of aggression and conquest, this imperial- 
ism without precedent in latter days, has been shown 
by a North American writer, "William Hard, in an ultra- 
sensational article severely condemned by the American 
governm^ent. It was published in the Metropolitan 
Magazine. The author imagines a conversation between 
Wilson, the Kaiser, Venizelos, the prime minister of 
Greece, and a bandit of the Dominican Republic, in 
which it is shown that the United States, in their rela- 
tions with Latin America, have proceeded without a 
shred of honesty. 

The United States is unquestionably the most im- 
perialistic country in the world. The first States of 
the Union, since those times when the English Puritans 
landed from the Mayflower, have not been satisfied 
later with reaching out toward the West, even to the 



58 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Pacific. They have desired and have obtained colonies 
in distant seas. Roosevelt has defended this policy of 
intervention on the part of his country in the small 
South American republics by use of the personal argu- 
ment of a man who holds a big stick in his hands. ''If 
I have a happy home/' he seems to say, ''enjoying there- 
in a prosperous life, and I find that in the house at the 
right hand side of mine they make a great deal of noise 
at night, and do not let me, or my wife or children 
sleep, I am justified in knocking at the door of these 
neighbors and demanding silence : and if the noise con- 
tinues, I have the right to use my big stick to make them 
keep quiet. *' An argument this to snuff out by main 
force the revolutions of Mexico. Continuing this phi- 
losophy, Roosevelt has said almost in these words: "If 
in the house on the left they have in the yard a pile of 
filth, the odor of which infests my house and places in 
danger my life and that of my wife and family, I have 
the right to rap on their door and to demand that they 
clean up their premises, and if they do not do so, I 
compel them with my big stick.*' An argument this for 
interfering in Ecuador and forcibly cleaning up Guaya- 
quil, if the Ecuadorians will not or cannot do so. Like- 
wise, Roosevelt considered himself at liberty to open a 
door (Panama) for his own use in his neighbor's house, 
when by doing so he would contrive to shorten the 
distance between two rooms in his own house : the room 
to the East, New York; and the room to the West, San 
Francisco. 

Tyranny will always find a suitable pretext to warrant 
an abuse of force. Could not the same argument be 
stretched so that the United States might with its '^hig 
stick'' rule over all Latin America? The United States 



IMPERIALISM 59 

is becoming now a military — a warrior country. They 
are creating a stupendous army and navy. When these 
forces are mustered out from the European war, will 
they not look for a way to occupy themselves elsewhere ? 
Every organ must exercise its functions or it dies. Or- 
gans that are not used become withered. If the fish 
would cease to swim, its fins would no longer function 
and would, in course of time, disappear. If a species 
of bird should not fly for generations, the wings would 
likewise go, just as the blind mole does not need to see 
in the darkness of its underground galleries. 

The United States has been imperialistic in the past; 
it is so to-day and will be more imperialistic to-morrow. 
Consider the name they have appropriated for them- ^ 
selves. They call their country America, and its citizens 
Americans. Is not Canada a part of America, and are 
not the Canadians Americans? Mexico, Brazil, Argen- 
tina and Chile, are they not a part of America and are 
not their inhabitants as much entitled to be called 
Americans as those of the United States ? But no, they 
have taken the name as their own. If the United States 
had formed their country in the old world, and if they 
had conquered European Turkey instead of the land 
of the red man, they would surely have called their 
country Europe and their inhabitants Europeans, that 
is, if they did not call it THE WORLD once and for all. 

It is particularly serious for us that North American 
capital should be finding its way to our country in ever 
increasing quantities. In Chilean mines alone they have 
invested more than five hundred million dollars, and 
this is only the start to capture our natural resources, as 
is the case on a larger or smaller scale in all the Latin 
American republics. If, a little later on, there should be 



60 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

a great labor strike, with attacks upon the life and 
property of the North American owners of these great 
mining possessions, might not these men of the "big 
stick" ask reparation for their wrongs and indemnities 
for their losses, and might they not even venture so far 
as to interfere in our internal political life? The most 
powerful navy in the world would be ready at their 
orders, anxious to go into action. We are the country 
of iron, of coal and of copper. We shall always be an 
irresistible lodestone to North American capital and 
enterprise. Although we are so far away, our danger 
for the future is very great. Sometimes my conscience 
pricks me when I think that the success of my efforts 
to sell to the Yankees my copper deposits may aggra- 
vate the danger to which our country is exposed in the 
future. As a matter of fact, our government ought not 
to permit the sale of our mining resources to the Ameri- 
cans, and as it would be impossible to make an odious 
exception for them alone in our legislature, we should 
prohibit the sale of our mines to foreigners in general. 

There exists a veritable Yankee peril for Latin Amer- 
ica. I have always thought so, and what I now see and 
read only confirms my suspicions. Of course, there are 
many here who write of Pan Americanism — of inter- 
continental love; but all that is only vain chatter, as I 
can easily prove to you by quoting from books and 
papers published here. 

The University professor, Hamilton Wright Mabie, 
in lectures he gave at Japanese Universities under the 
auspices of the Carnegie Foundation in the cause of 
international conciliation, said these words: 

**A war with Mexico ended in a forced sale to the 
United States of a territory that constitutes now six 



IMPERIALISM 61 

of our States. ^lany Americans believe that this war 
was unnecessary and nnjust, but a glance at the map 
will show that this territory, for which the United States 
paid eighteen million dollars, was an integral part of 
our national dominion, and sooner or later would have 
had to come under the flag of the United States." 

An argument this which would serve Germany for 
claiming the Belgian coast; a contention that would 
justify Brazil in taking possession of Uruguay. It 
suffices to look at the map to be convinced of this. This 
argument was proffered by an American professor in a 
foreign country, under the auspices of a Yankee founda- 
tion for the promotion of universal peace ! 

A magazine called The Seven Seas, the official organ 
of the Army and Navy League, says in one of its num- 
bers: 

**A world dominion is the only logical and natural 
final aim of a nation. The real militarist believes that 
pacifism and humanitarianism are respectively the mas- 
culine and feminine manifestations of a natural degen- 
eration. It is the absolute right of a nation to live with 
the greatest possible intensity, to expand, to found new 
colonies, to become as rich as possible through all appro- 
priate means, such as armed conquest, commerce and 
diplomacy. ' ' 

One of the most important newspapers of Chicago, 
the Chicago Trihune, prints every day this motto : 

"My country, in her intercourse with other nations 
may she be always right; but my country, right or 
wrong." 

A famous American writer, Alfred Mahan, says in 
one of his books: 



4^ 



62 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

*'As civilized man has every day a greater necessity 
for lands that he may occupy, he is always in search of 
new fields where he may establish and develop himself; 
but as it happens that this planet is entirely explored 
and exploited, there are no longer desert continents or 
desert isles; there are only territories more or less oc- 
cupied by a population more or less well organized. 
Hence proceeds the natural direction of human tides, 
whose impulse, like all natural forces, follows the line 
of least resistance. When two races, one highly organ- 
ized and the other of inferior and rudimentary organiza- 
tion, meet, the result is not doubtful; the first dispos- 
sesses the second, because the right of the previous occu- 
pant disappears before the right of the superior ex- 
ploiter. ' ' 

According to Mahan, to dispute about the morality of 
the phenomena that are developed in accordance with 
that principle, is like disputing about the morality of an 
earthquake. 

What do you think of the philosophy of this American 
sociologist? The Germans themselves might adopt and 
use it as a pretext for taking possession of all Russia or 
all France. They only need consider them-selves su- 
perior exploiters in order to force the former occupants 
to retire from their own fatherland. Consequent^ 
they could proceed with a moral right about which it 
would be as foolish to dispute as about the morality of 
an earthquake. 

Not long since, at the invitation of President "Wilson;, 
there visited this country twenty newspaper men from 
Mexico. While in Chicago one of these journalists, 
Senor de la Parra, made a speech rather unfriendly 
towards the United States, an impertinent speech, if you 
take into account that the journalist was a guest of this 
country. But if it is true that the utterances of the 



IMPERIALISM 63 

Mexican were out of place, it is none the less true that 
certain comments of the public press were much more 
impertinent. Arthur Brisbane, editor-in-chief of the 
Chicago Herald and Examiner, published on the front 
page of his paper a comment on the remarks of the 
Mexican, as follows: 

**It would be worth while for the Mexicans to study 
the character of "VVoodrow Wilson. The Kaiser forgot 
to make that study; this ought to serve as a warning 
to Mexico. Mr. Wilson wishes nothing more of Mexico 
than civility of the damnedest, commonest kind ; further- 
more, with respect to the lives and properties of Amer- 
icans, Mexico ought to respect these lives and interests 
and leave to one side its one-fourth Spanish and three- 
fourths Indian idea that the United States are afraid 
of the Mexicans. In only one of the twelve war camps 
this country has all the material necessarj^ to tear Mex- 
ico to pieces like an old newspaper. It would be worth 
while for Mexico to proceed with courtesy and justice, 
especially if it wishes to continue its life as a nation. 
We took and we improved a large piece of Mexico not 
long ago : Texas, etc. The next piece that we take will 
be larger." 

This editor does not say *'may be,'* he says '*will be." 
H. H. Powers, who was professor of the famous Uni- 
versity of Stanford, has attracted a great deal of atten- 
tion by his two recent books. The last, *' America 
Among the Nations," appeared after the United States 
had entered the war, and after the declaration that 
they were fighting for justice and democracy. This 
book might be quoted almost entirely in corroboration of 
what I have written. Its principal merit, in my con- 
ception, is the barefaced frankness with which it speaks. 
I reproduce a few lines taken from different chapters: 



64 THE GULF OF IIISUNDEBSTANDING 

A ''Our Latin American neighbors, though sharing our 
preference for democracy and modeling their govern- 
ments as closely as possible on our own, persist in re- 
garding us with mingled suspicion and fear. Neither 
our protestations of friendship, nor our democracy, nor 
our history as they read it, reassures them." 

Take note of this introduction of our author, that I 
quote only that you may compare the above with the 
rest of the quotations that follow. Speaking of the 
struggle that the North American colonies had with the 
Indians, he says: ''You can make a man of him (the 
Indian) in time; but not as easily as you can displace 
him with a better man already made." Speaking of the 
purchase that the United States made from France of 
possessions that really belonged to Spain, he says : 

"The reluctance against purchasing stolen goods we 
did not feel, as indeed nations never do." . . . "This 
acquisition, the largest ever made in all our history, 
was accomplished at the ripe age of fifteen years." 

Continuing the same theme, the author says; 

"Florida was necessary to complete our natural 
frontier, in itself a strong incentive to aggression. If 
it had been objected that Spain had rights in Florida, 
the answer would probably have been that incompetency 
invalidates all such claims, a doctrine instinctively ac- 
cepted by energetic peoples and ever a cardinal prin- 
ciple of American policy." 

Florida was perhaps a natural frontier coveted by the 
United States; but notice what he says of the natural 
frontiers of his country. Mentioning that its limits 
reached at one time to the Eocky Mountains, a natural 
frontier, he says: "But the American people have not 



IMPERIALISM 65 

been looking for stopping places. For them all stopping 
places have been starting places, and that forthwith." 
In reality it cannot be said that the Philippines, Hawaii 
and Alaska are natnral frontiers. Why not the Straits 
of Magellan? He continues: 

''We want the earth, and we say so quite frankly. 
Not that we have far reaching designs of w^orld empire, 
far from it. Such unholy ambitions have always been 
abhorrent to us. We merely want the next thing be- 
yond. We are like the young woman who had no sym- 
pathy with the craze to be rich. All she wanted was to 
have money enough so that when she saw something 
she wanted, she could buy it. " . . . ' ' Incentives to the 
control of the American tropics are likely to be found in 
the world's growing need for their products, the neces- 
sity of more intensive exploitation, the inefficiency of 
their peoples, and the incompetency of their govern- 
ments to encourage and protect foreign enterprise. It 
would be rash to predict that this inherent conflict be- 
tween northern energy and tropical lethargy will not 
result in farther extension of northern control over the 
American tropics. . . . Doctrines do not determine des- 
tiny but destiny determines doctrines." 

Speaking of the possibility of a union among Latin 
American countries, such as has formed a single great 
nation in North America, he says: 

''This historic method will not be applied, certainly 
not if we can help it, and as a consequence, South Amer- 
ica will seemingly remain divided. . . . The relation of 
Latin America to the United States is inherently that 
of a protectorate, and the ^lonroe Doctrine is the rec- 
ognition of that relation. This the Latin nations per- 
fectly understand and deeply resent. . . . The demands 
made by a single invention like the automobile are rev- 
olutionary in our relations to the tropics. These de- 
mands, the tropics in the hands of their own people, 



66 THE GULF OF 3IISUNDEBSTANDING 

and managed in the true tropical way, are utterly un- 
able to supply. Yet there is almost no limit to their 
productivity if their exuberant nature forces can be 
brought under human control. ' ' 

Notice this, my dear wife: the inhabitants of Brazil, 
where rubber is produced for automobiles, are not hu- 
man; and this author says previously that even when 
one can make a man of a savage, it is much easier to 
eliminate the savage and put in his place a man already 
made. A decisive argument for not educating Latin 
America, but on the contrary replacing the native popu- 
lation by North Americans already educated. If rub- 
ber is the magnet of Brazil, nitrate, also not produced 
in the United States, is the attraction held by Chile. 
Many of us fear the consequences of the successful 
manufacture of synthetic nitrate in this country. Maybe 
this artificial production here would be our salvation in 
the future. If they have their own nitrate they will not 
trouble to get possession of ours. 

What does this author think of us in particular? 
Here you can see: ''Chile and Brazil have a hybrid 
population with little power of organization or of rigor- 
ous assertion." This shows a supine ignorance so far 
as our country is concerned. And of the Filipinos, what 
does he say? ''We have given them a copy in minia- 
ture of our American government, a Senate, a House 
of Representatives, a Cabinet and all, which they use 
much as a Hottentot would a high hat." 

And this stupendous book by a professor of one of 
the most famous American universities, ends with this 
declaration of principles that could not be in more fla- 
grant contradiction to all the previous pages. Speaking 
of a possible objection that what both England and the 




IMPERIALISM 

United States aim at in the present^^r is to put the 
Anglo-Saxon on top in place of the Teuton, he replies: 

*'No, what we want is the English principle on top 
instead of the German. This principle is the principle 
of fellowship, not of feudalism. It leaves each one free 
to live his own life and think his own thoughts and go his 
own ways, and to see the power and the greatness of fel- 
lowship in this liberty of its members/' 

The Monroe Doctrine is one of the greatest camouflages 
of history. '' America for the Americans" is a tragic 
sentence for us. The first word, *' America," means the 
three Americas ; and the last word, ' * Americans, ' ' means 
the inhabitants of the United States. 

"We do not need so interested a tutor. This doctrine 
never had the semblance of kindness and protection for 
weak Latin America. It was, from the beginning, a 
protection for the United States itself, which feared the 
possession by Europeans of colonies on American soil 
because this might place its own independence in danger. 
If Mexico had become German they would have had to 
fear that some day Washington or New York or San 
Francisco would have to be German. The Monroe Doe- 
trine will be in the future, as it has already begun to 
be, the anesthetic to be used by Uncle Sam as he ampu- 
tates Central America and South America. No doubt, 
Americans are clever surgeons ! 

What wonder, then, that South America should hate 
the United States? This anecdote might well be a true 
story: A Yankee asks a citizen of Ecuador : "Why do 
you not clean up Guayaquil? Americans will not come 
to such an insanitary spot." The Ecuadorian replies: 
'*But we prefer the filth to the Americans." 

J. Gamble Reighard writes in the Sunset review: 



68 THE GULF OF MISUNDEBSTANDING 

''"Who said that the South Americans wished to be 
Pan Americans? In the United States there are enthu- 
siasts who write and speak as if the Latins were anxious 
to form closer relations between our country and theirs 
. . . Latin America has no wish to learn anything from 
us ; they look for inspiration to the Latin nations of Eu- 
rope, to which they are related by ties of race, by cul- 
ture and by all natural sympathies. In speaking of 
Latin America we ought never to lose sight of this es-" 
sential fact: the fundamental difference of culture be- 
tween the Southern Iberian and the Northern Anglo- 
Saxon." 

This is the truth. "We are two opposed worlds acci- 
dentally bearing the same name. We have no more in 
common than have William Taft, ex-president of the 
United States, and William Hohenzollern, German 
kaiser, only the name. 

A matter for serious consideration is that Anglo- 
Saxon America wishes to devour Latin America. The 
United States have been comparatively slow in starting 
the conquest of South America because they have been 
so busy during the past century in conquering their own 
continent. The same thing has happened in regard to 
their industries. They did not look for foreign trade 
in the beginning because they had first to supply their 
own market. They had first to get rich by exploiting 
their own resources. Now that they have satisfied their 
needs in this respect they are looking about for foreign 
markets to conquer. The same thing will happen in their 
thirst for territorial conquest. The Monroe Doctrine 
is this : A glutton who is eating his own plate of food 
and has neither time nor hunger nor stomach to eat the 
dish that he sees farther on. He understands that later 
he will have time, hunger and stomach to partake of it 



IMPERIALISM m 

and he says to those who might wish to help themselves : 
**Let no one touch that dish." America for the Ameri- 
cans ! We hope that the greedy one will not have digested 
his first course until we are sufficiently strong to de- 
fend ourselves. 

How fortunate it is that Latin America for the most 
part has kept herself neutral in this war. No matter 
how much the great nations may protest to-day about 
justice and equity when referring to the weaker nations, 
we cannot be so innocent as to believe in them even when 
in exceptioi'' al cases such protests are made in transient 
good faitli 

If we should declare in favor of the Allies and Ger- 
many should triumph, the latter would take us after- 
wards in her fist and squeeze us as one does a lemon; 
if we should side with Germany we would be cut to pieces 
quite as promptly by the Allies. And which side is going 
to win? "W^e do not know. Whose triumph would be 
to our advantage ? That of neither the one nor the other. 
It would be better for South America that neither the 
Allies nor Germany should triumph. Again, in a prob- 
able future war between Japan and the United States 
much less would it be to our advantage that either should 
triumph. Men have a conscience, nations have none. 
As Professor Powers saj^s in the book that I have men- 
tioned: ''Doctrines do not determine destiny, but des- 
tiny does determine doctrines." It is to our advan- 
tage that there should be a balance of power in the 
world, seeing that the world has no conscience. An 
eqaiilibrium of nations is the only salvation, the only 
security for small nations. When this balance of power 
ceases, when a nation believes itself to be stronger, noth- 
ing is respected. Belgiwrn, The great nations have in- 



70 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

vented a maxim that is above all moral codes: **The 
vital interests of the country come first." Is there no 
parallel in the world for the case of Belgium ? The rape 
of Panama. 

The balance of power among the great nations suits 
us in order that the little ones should be respected. 
For this reason, up to a certain point, South America 
has been respected. The United States has kept us from 
being conquered by Europe. Europe has defended us, 
as far as she could, from being conquered by the United 
States, and this state of affairs will continue if none of 
the parties in the fight gain an absolutely definite victory, 
only, of course, until the day arrives that is not far dis- 
tant, in which we shall be respected for our own strength. 

South America is the continent of the future and we 
ourselves want to fashion this future according to our 
temperament, according to our soul, according to our 
idiosjmcrasy. Latin Americans will never mix with 
Anglo-Saxon Americans. It is impossible, although there 
should come thousands of thousands of the youth of 
South America to study in the universities of the United 
States, in order to transplant to our soil this civilization. 
Because a nest of duck eggs are hatched out by a hen 
they do not have to be chicks that break the egg-shells. 
"We shall always keep our soul, our temperament. Oil 
does not mix with water, and if it is attempted to force 
the mixture, there will be a protest that may be violent 
even on the part of the sensitive Latin American spirit. 

Speaking of this I wish to say 

Your husband who adores you 
« » « 



IMPERIALISM 71 

Miss Jones took very much to heart the task of an- 
swering these letters. It seemed to her that she was 
speaking to the whole of Latin America. Not only did 
she retain a duplicate of her notes, but she also care- 
fully copied the original letters from Chicago. At first 
her idea had been to use many of the items for some fu- 
ture work of her own, but when writing the follow- 
ing comments, she began to see that the publication of 
these letters themselves would make a useful book: 

Madam : 

This letter of your husband's has caused me the deep- 
est regret, but I am well aware, nevertheless, that it 
contains a synthesis of opinion held by many Latin 
Americans with regard to my country. They distrust 
and fear us. They think we are a menace to their peace 
and their future. I believe, madam, that this distrust 
and terror engenders the dislike and even the hate that 
many feel toward us. 

For my part, I entertain a great love for Latin 
America. I believe this is because I know it so well, be- 
cause I have studied it for j^ears, because I have read 
! its history, because I foresee its future, and because I 
' regard its problems from its own j)oint of view. I 
know and I understand Latin America, and for these 
reasons I love it. Our President, "Woodrow Wilson, in an 
address which he delivered in Buffalo not long since 
to the workingmen of my country, referred to a reply 
of Charles Lamb when they asked him if he hated a 
certain person of whom they were speaking. The cele- 
brated English author replied: *'No, how could I hate 
him if I know him ? ' ' 

To know a person intimately, to penetrate into the 



72 TEE GULF OF 3IISUNDERSTANDING 

deep recesses of his soul, to be able to interpret in the 
light of all circumstances, every reflection, whether real 
or fancied, every gesture, every action of a person, 
signifies to have a close regard for that person. Katusha, 
the fallen woman, condemned for a crime committed in 
the house of ill fame where she plied her evil trade, was 
intimately known by Prince Neckludoff, who followed 
her into exile in Siberia, and he, a prince, loved that 
woman and asked her to be his wife. The secret of 
love is to know, to understand, to see beyond the super- 
ficial fallacy of vision; and the secret for hating is to 
ignore, to see all through a distorted lens and to willfully 
reject the view bared in the radiant light of the noon- 
day sun. 

The Americas do not know each other. Any person 
of culture in your country knows the history of Egypt, 
but ignores completely our history, just as we ignore 
the history of Latin America. This mutual ignorance 
appears to have been officially fostered if we examine 
the curricula of public schools and colleges in both 
American continents. The result is that each forms 
hasty judgments that are not based on reliable informa- 
tion. 

Your husb'and, madam, sees our country always 
through a prism of suspicion and fear, and for that 
reason all looks gloomy to him ; he interprets all by the 
same stereotyped formula. He conceives an imperalis- 
tic country, accepting a qualification by which they 
refer to us quite commonly in Latin America. However, 
the truth is that we are not imperialistic and every day 
we are farther from being so. We are fighting to-day, 
offering the blood of our best sons and the accumulated 



IMPERIALISM 73 

fortunes of a century precisely to strangle foreign im- 
perialism. 

Your husband, my dear lady, has come to see even 
in our name ''America" an intention of conquest. The 
name is wrong. It is not improper to call ourselves the 
''United States of America," but wrong if we call our- 
selves "Americans." This is due only to the difficulty 
there is in giving us another name. It is easy to form 
the name Argentine from Argentina, Chilean from Chile, 
Brazilian from Brazil, but it is not so easy to coin a word 
like "Unitedstatian" of America. On the other hand, 
there are many names in history ill bestowed which re- 
main as they are because custom sanctions it. The whole 
American continent ought to be called Columbia and not 
America, because it was Christopher Columbus, and not 
Amerigo Vespucci, who discovered it. 

We speak in America of the Orient, meaning the 
lands of ancient civilization situated to the east of 
Europe, because they are called by this name over 
there; whereas we should really call this part of the 
world the Occident, as it lies to the west of us. 

The conquest of our continent from one sea to the 
other has obeyed the necessity to which Mahan refers, 
that of a more gifted people displacing the Indian who 
lived on an inferior plane of civilization. 

This conquest of our continent is parallel to the con- 
quest made by you South Americans in your own con- 
tinent. In this necessary struggle between the Indians 
and the Americans there were doubtless less cruelties 
than in the conquest of Mexico or of Peru. For some 
time it was a general belief in Spain that the Indians 
had no soul. 

It is sufficient to see how our government treats the 



74 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Indians to-day, the schools created for them, the way 
in which they are protected and helped in the develop- 
ment of their properties, to understand that we know 
our duty as a Christian nation toward these primitive 
inhabitants of the soil. To-day there are nearly ten 
thousand Indians enrolled in our army and navy^ al- 
most every one of whom has gone voluntarily to fight 
for his country. Last year it was calculated that there 
were some three hundred and forty thousand Indians in 
my country, surely many more than inhabited the land 
when the first colonists landed here. These Indians un- 
questionably live a better life than they ever lived be- 
fore the European colonization. 

It is not my desire to make odious comparisons, but 
we must admit that Latin America has not yet taken 
seriously its obligations toward the indigenous inhabi- 
tant in each of those countries. There are countries like 
Bolivia where they sell them along with, the live stock 
of an estate. Much that is done there for the benefit of 
those poor Indians is due to the initiative, sacrifices, 
devotion and money of our people. "We have mission- 
aries, men and women, even in the heart of your own 
country, madam. These missionaries of both sexes go 
to live in those solitudes, in the midst of the Indians, not 
for tlie sake of an income, which is ridiculously small, 
but urged by an overwhelming desire to serve the hum- 
blest of the human race. 

It seems absurd that a South American, in judging 
us, should advance as proof of our imperialism tlie 
conquest of our continent in the struggle with the 
original inhabitants. As for our foreign expansion, there 
is more than a little to say in our defense, and I hope 



IMPERIALISM 75 

that you are sufficiently interested to attend to what I 
have to say. 

In the Monroe Doctrine your husband sees a tragic 
menace for the future of Latin America, and he stamps 
it as having had an ulterior motive from its very be- 
ginning. I agree that the Monroe Doctrine was dictated 
partly for the security of our own country. It was 
also in part for our own sake. When a millionaire 
founds a hospital, and endows it for the express purpose 
of combating the plague of cancer, is it not also to his 
personal interest and to that of his family that the dis- 
ease should diminish in his city or his country, and that 
they should be safeguarded by the experience and re- 
search which he has promoted ? Does it lessen the merit 
of his philanthropy if, reciprocally, he and his family 
should benefit by it? Every good action toward others re- 
flects upon the benefactor as there is reflected in a mir- 
ror the face of one who looks in it. The United States was 
with Latin America in its campaign for independence, 
and decided later to uphold that independence. The Mon- 
roe Doctrine has been of service to South America. It 
has been an easy pillow upon which the Latin American 
continent has been able to rest its head quietly during 
its childhood and flrst youth. When no longer needed, 
it will be relegated to oblivion, just as the cradle is sent 
to the lumber room when it is no longer needed by the 
little one. 

Your husband quotes the words of Professor H. H. 
Powers to prove that we consider the Monroe Doctrine 
an acknowledgment of our protectorate over Latin 
America. If there has been any subject among us specu- 
lated upon and discussed it is just this Monroe Doctrine. 
In almost any gathering of persons who discuss this 



76 TEE GULF OF 3IISUNDERSTANDING 

, doctrine there are as many opinions as there are differ- 
ent kinds of raiment. To the interpretation of Profes- 
sor Powers' line of thought as exposed in such stupen- 
dous citations as your husband quotes, may I not contrast 
that of our own ex-President Roosevelt, considered even 
by your husband the most imperialistic of Americans. 
He says the following in his autobiography : 

''The Monroe Doctrine lays down the rule that the 
"Western Hemisphere is not hereafter to be treated as 
subject to settlement and occupation by Old World 
powers. It is not international law ; but it is a cardinal 
principle of our foreign policy. There is no difficulty 
at the present day in maintaining this doctrine, save 
where the American power whose interest is threatened 
has shown itself in international matters both weak and 
delinquent. The great and prosperous civilized com- 
monwealths, such as the Argentine, Brazil, and Chile, 
in the Southern half of South America, have advanced 
so far that they no longer stand in any position of 
tutelage toward the United States. They occupy to- 
ward us precisely the position that Canada occupies. 
Their friendship is the friendship of equals for equals. 
My view was (and is, because Mr. Roosevelt has repeated 
this on several occasions) that as regards these nations 
there was no more necessity for asserting the Monroe 
Doctrine than there was to assert it for themselves. Of 
course, if one of these nations, or if Canada, should be 
overcome by some Old World power, which then pro- 
ceeded to occupy its territory, we would undoubtedly, 
if the American nation needed our help, give it in order 
to prevent such occupation from taking place. But 
the initiative would come from the nation itself, and the 
United States would merely act as a friend whose help 
was invoked. The case was (and is) widely different 
as regards certain — not all — of the tropical states in 
the neighborhood of the Caribbean sea. Where these 
states are stable and prosperous, they stand on a foot- 



IMPERIALISM 77 

ing of absolute equality with all other communities. 
But some of them have been a prey to such continuous 
revolutionary misrule as to have grown impotent either 
to do their duties to outsiders or to enforce their rights 
against outsiders. The United States has not the slight- 
est desire to make aggressions on any one of these 
states. On the contrary, it will submit to much from 
them without showing resentment. If any great civil- 
ized power, Russia or Germany, for instance, had be- 
haved toward us as Venezuela under Castro behaved, 
this country would have gone to war at once. "We did 
not go to war with Venezuela merely because our people 
declined to be irritated by the actions of a weak oppo- 
nent, and showed a forbearance which probably went 
beyond the limits of wisdom in refusing to take umbrage 
at what was done by the weak, although we would cer- 
tainly have resented it had it been done by the strong. ' ' 

It is important, madam, that you take into con- 
sideration that our constitution prohibits acquisition of 
territory by conquest, for which reason, Florida, the 
Philippines and Panama, like Louisiana and Alaska, have 
all been territories that we have bought and paid for. 
Even in the cases of our victorious wars we have amazed 
the world in that we, the conquering nation, have paid 
indemnities. I do not believe there is another countrj^ 
in the world whose constitution is so stamped with this 
principle of international honor. On surrendering 
Alsace-Lorraine France had to pay to Prussia the highest 
indemnity that had been paid in the world up to that 
date, and this in a war provoked by the victors. Eng- 
land, France and Germany have colonized in thirty years 
nine million two hundred and fifty thousand square 
miles of territory, containing one hundred and thirty- 
nine million souls, which is equivalent to a domain 
larger than all Central and South America, and con- 



78 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

taming nearly twice the population of all Latin America. 
It is true that some of the purchases of territory made 
by my country have been forced: for instance, the ter- 
ritory which we bought from Mexico following the war 
which brought about the annexation of Texas, a State 
which had already made itself independent and had re- 
peatedly asked to be taken over. 

We, as a country, in our already long history, have 
committed errors and injustices, both in domestic as 
well as in our foreign policy. Where is the man who 
has not committed such errors? In our former rela- 
tions with South and Central America there can be cited 
cases of actuations that redound to our discredit. This 
our present political leaders constantly recognize. 

How have these injustices occurred? Moneyed in- 
terests have, on several occasions, secured objectives 
abroad that were opposed to the principles of stainless 
morality. In reading our history, as in reading the 
history of any other country throughout the record of 
mankind, we find on strict investigation, ever the struggle 
between justice and unlawfully acquired privileges. Our 
country cannot be an exception to this universal law, and 
also there have been and there are still such unjust 
privileges among us. Great corporations have been 
able to laugh at justice and to carry on unlawful busi- 
ness within our country, in defiance of the rights of 
our citizens. Who can doubt that trusts like these 
would be successful in their perverse way when ex- 
tending operations to foreign parts? This has been 
responsible in the past for a foreign policy at times 
unjust. It led us to the annexation of Texas and to 
the war with Mexico, strenuously resisted by the moral 
forces of the North. That was a triumph of evil in our 



IMPERIALISM 79 

domestic struggles between good and evil. It is the 
reason why Plenry Clay was not elected President in 
the campaign that gave the office of Chief Executive 
to Polk. The annexation of the Mexican territories to 
our country was an imposition of the slave interests. 
It was triumph, with reverberation abroad, of undue 
privileges, just as other privileged interests have often 
triumphed in internal affairs, to the detriment of our 
own citizens. 

But any one can see, comparing with the past, that 
justice is getting the upper hand against these privileges 
in internal affairs. Our present tendency is carrying us 
toward the nationalization of all public utility industries 
that involve privileges, such as railroads, telegraphs, 
telephones, the merchant marine, river commerce, and 
surely, later on, mines and other natural resources. From 
now on there will be less to fear from the foreign policy 
of the United States than in the past. 

If there are examples in our history of an interna*- 
tional policy at variance with morality, such as can be 
explained in the way I have just indicated, we can, 
nevertheless, offer many more examples in which we have 
proceeded according to a moral code higher than that 
of other great powers. A case in point was the conduct 
of President Wilson in the combined action of England, 
Germany, France and Japan regarding China. In this 
instance our country was opposed to the interests of 
our capitalists and in defense of the purest interna- 
tional ethics. 

My dear madam: in no other country in the world 
is there being waged such a fight against interests 
which abuse their power as that in which we are en- 
gaged; and as imperialistic wars are always dictated 



80 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

by these interests, the conclusion is natural that our 
country will henceforth be less involved in unjust wars 
than in the past. 

Nevertheless, madam, when hastily analyzing some ar- 
bitrary act, we are liable, instinctively, to darken the 
colors of accusation and to fail to give due consideration 
to extenuating circumstances or justification on the part 
of the aggressor. I wish to analyze for you the two cases 
to which your husband refers: those of Panama and 
of the Philippine Islands. The truth in these respects 
is little known in Latin America, as I have had ample 
occasion to notice in my journeys through those coun- 
tries. 

To compare the case of Panama with that of Belgium 
is possible only with an unfathomable ignorance of 
history. The construction of the Panama Canal was 
a necessity felt by the whole world since Balboa first 
crossed the isthmus with his dauntless companions in 
adventure. This is obvious to any one who glances 
at the map of the world. 

France, impelled by the genius of de Lesseps, construc- 
tor of the Suez Canal, tried to carry out this enterprise. 
The immense capital and genius of France failed signally 
in the attempt. 

The United States, by means of the Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty, acquired, as far as Europe was concerned, the 
right to take up the work that had been begun by the 
Old World. The government of my country hesitated 
as to whether they should open the proposed route 
through Nicaragua or through Panama, the first country 
being independent and the second a part of the Re- 
public of Colombia. Both Nicaragua and Colombia 
used every effort to induce us to give them the prefer- 



IMPERIALISM 81 

ence. The experts appointed by Roosevelt to report on 
the matter gave their decision in favor of Panama. 

At the request of Colombia, the Hay-Herran treaty 
was celebrated, conceding to us the right to construct 
a canal across the isthmus. As a matter of fact, the Re- 
public of New Granada, the predecessor of Colombia, had 
guaranteed us this right since 1848. But Colombia main- 
tained a continual state of anarchy. Then came the im- 
prisonment and death of President San Clemente and 
the dictatorship of Marroquin. This despot believed he 
could disregard the Hay-Herran treaty, and so gain time 
to allow for the expiration of the contract with the 
French company of Panama, whereupon he could lay 
claim to the forty million dollars that the United States 
was to pay to the French company. 

Not only was my country, under the presidency of 
Roosevelt, highly indignant at this treatment, but also 
in no lesser degree was Panama, where all wished ar- 
dently for the i^rompt opening of the canal that was 
to benefit this region in so many ways. Naturally this 
provoke4 » revolution in Panama. I say naturally, 
madam, because Panama was accustomed to revolutions. 
From 1850 to 1902 there had been fifty-three revolutions 
or attempts at such in Panama ; tliat is to say there had 
been one revolt each year. Panama brought forth revo- 
lutions as naturally as an apple tree bears apples every 
fall. 

Ex-President Roosevelt maintains that it is by no 
means a fact that he provoked this last triumphant revo- 
lution of Panama. What he did was to refrain from 
helping Colombia to reestablish order, as he had helped 
on former occasions; and he believed that he had good 
cause for such abstention, given the conduct of Colombia. 



82 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

This revolution broke out just at the time when Roose- 
velt had prepared a message to Congress asking for the 
relinquishment of the Panama Canal project unless 
they were prepared to pass measures compelling Colom- 
bia to respect its contracts. In spite of this, a treaty 
of friendship with Colombia is pending in the Senate, 
in which the independence of Panama is recognized, and 
by which my country pays twenty-five million dollars for 
the Canal Zone. This is over and above the compensa- 
tion previously given to the Republic of Panama. This 
treaty will be approved because it has the support of 
public opinion. 

The Latin Americans, in general, know but one version 
of the history of the canal and certainly that version 
presents a hard case. I have studied this problem 
carefully and sympathetically and with a leaning in 
favor of Colombia, and I have found that my country 
has conducted itself most honorably. We Americans 
have always been indifferent to the opinions that for- 
eigners have of us and therefore have never cared to 
defend ourselves when attacked unjustly beyond our 
own borders, and I believe 'that this idiosyncrasy has 
had fatal consequences^ as it is what most has separated 
the two Americas. 

Neither has the case of the Philippine Islands been 
properly explained to our neighbors of the other 
America. Those who burn the midnight oil have given 
many reasons for our war with Spain. This war was 
not waged with any idea of conquest, but only to put 
an end to the oppression by the Spaniards in Cuba 
after that island had been fighting for years for the 
independence that its Iberian sisters had achieved. The 
struggle at our very gates was unequal and bloody. 



IMPERIALISM 83 

If at the door of your house, madam, a big man is 
abusing a little boy, would you and your husband re- 
main impassive, contemplating the fight? We did not 
remain impassive. The blowing up of the Maine was as 
if the two combatants' in the unequal fight had broken a 
window in your house. The explosion of the Maine was 
like the tragedy of Sarajevo in the present world war, 
the insignificant, immediate and determining cause. 

My country interfered to secure Cuban independence, 
a thing that it accomplished. No other nation of the 
world has respected thus its pledged word in interna- 
tional obligations of this sort. Did England respect 
hers in Egj^pt? 

The fact that the Spaniards had warships in the 
Philippines with which they could blockade our com- 
merce, made us fight in Manila and take from the 
Spaniards their possessions of the Pacific ; possessions as 
unjustly and cruelly governed as the same Island of 
Cuba. It has not been and is not our wish to keep 
these islands, but in undertaking to give them their 
independence, we have not specified a fixed date, pre- 
ferring to give the Filipinos sufficient time to prepare 
themselves for free and independent citizenship. Even 
when the Filipinos are ready and desirous to exercise 
the rights of citizenship, I doubt whether we should ac- 
cept them as citizens of the United States rather than 
see them independent. 

No efforts have been spared by the United States to 
prepare the Philippine Islands for their own govern- 
ment. What have we left undone to help their in- 
habitants to advance as a race, as a people, and not as 
tools of their North American rulers? We brought 
in the first place hundreds of young Filipinos to be 



84 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

trained in our country as teachers of their own race. 
The educational work carried out by us there has no 
precedent in the history of those islands, nor in the 
history of any colony of any country. Egypt is an 
English protectorate, Egypt has eleven million inhab- 
itants and the Philippine Islands eight million. Egypt 
has two hundred and eighty-one thousand children in 
its schools, and the Philippine Islands have six hundred 
and ten thousand. This educational work, let it be said 
in passing, the American carries with him wherever he 
goes, with an unquenchable faith. In Alaska, the region 
of the eternal snows, in the cities near the pole, it has 
created schools for the Esquimaux; and the adult Es- 
quimau attends night school at Shismareff, in the north- 
east of Alaska. 

Professor Powers may say what he pleases of the 
American policy in the Philippine Islands; he may 
say that our attempt to teach them free government is 
like putting a silk dress on a hippopotamus. But he un- 
accountably forgets that he is dealing witli facts, though 
he claims to do so in every chapter of his book; and 
this American idealism, this American faith in education 
is for us an Aladdin's lamp, a fact and a reality in spite 
of Professor Powers, who, without realizing it, fre- 
quently poses as a preacher of imperialism, instead of 
being, as he pretends to be, a commentator or expounder 
of existing realities. One should not allow one's self 
to be carried away by a writer who has fallen in love 
with a bit of colored glass through which he sees the 
sea, the mountains and the sky, all of the same color. It 
is a fact, madam, that as much in deciding problems 
of internal import as in its foreign affairs, our country 
raises its moral standard higher each day that passes. 



IMPERIALISM 85 

This can be seen crystallized in President Wilson's 
policy which has dictated a new international code 
to the world. Certainly the American nation would not 
have been provoked into entering this struggle with the 
Central Empires if it had not believed that therein 
were involved principles of justice and morality. 

One more example of our so-called Imperialism will 
suffice to illustrate my point. There is a case in which 
the Senate of the United States refused to accept the 
annexation of a Latin American territory after the in- 
habitants had actually voted in favor of it. From 1844 
until 1861 the Dominican Republic was an independent 
state, and was, in the latter year, annexed to Spain, only 
to obtain its independence once again in 1865. It was 
the wish of President Grant to annex the country to the 
United States, and a treaty to that effect was ratified 
by the Dominican people. This treaty was rejected by 
the American Senate by a tie vote. 

The growing interest of the multitude in international 
affairs; Wilson's new plea for a diplomacy open to 
the bright sunshine, recommended for some time past by 
many American writers; the frank incorporation of 
the feminine conscience in affairs of state; the greater 
influence of the workingman in governmental decisions, 
even to the point where Presidents and Ministers of 
State have to persuade and convince instead of driving 
them; all this indicates that imperialism will be an ex- 
tinct social species in the second half of the twentieth 
century, just as the Megatherium is an extinct animal 
in our age; and, madam, the death blow will be dealt 
by the United States. Your husband is right in say- 
ing that the world has no conscience, but the truth is 



86 TEE OULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

that my country is making powerful contributions to- 
ward supplying the omission. 

A new world is coming into existence: the epoch of 
recognition of the individual. The twentieth century 
recognizes the strength, the worth of the individual, and 
believes in the greatest expansion of every heart, of 
every brain and of every conscience. This century will 
be called the century of Democracy. 

No matter, madam, that the Latin Americans will 
never mix with the Anglo Americans, as your husband 
says; no matter that we have different temperaments 
and a different idiosyncrasy. So are the peoples of Asia 
and those of Europe different. But this does not mean 
that in the world we cannot entertain a mutual respect 
nor all cooperate in the work of progress, of truth, of 
justice and in beautifying the planet that is our com- 
mon home. A jasmine flower cannot be grafted onto a 
rose bush. Each plant has its own peculiar life, and 
takes in varied proportions its food from the common 
soil, and their respective flowers have different colors 
and a different fragrance to perfume the air. The 
different peoples and races of this great garden of man- 
kind, madam, are distinct plants of different colors and 
perfume, destined in a none too distant future to enfold 
the earth in an atmosphere of tranquil and radiant 
beauty. I say a garden, and not a natural virgin for- 
est, because the garden is man's work and the forest 
where laws of brute nature alone have their sway pre- 
sents to us the case of a giant tree spreading imperialistic 
foliage to deprive its weaker rivals of the sunlight. 

Please do not believe, dear lady, by what I have said 
that these notes are intended to uphold the pacifist who 
lays down his arms, trusting tliat the world is, or 



IMPERIALISM 87 

will be, actuated only by principles of justice in its inter- 
national relations, but looking at the history of man- 
kind in general, we have to recognize that the trend is 
in that direction. See how every nation now seeks to 
justify its warfare as defensive, whereas in ancient 
times no pretext for conquest was considered necessary. 
But the truth is, the principles of individual morality 
accepted by every nation as binding within its bound- 
aries are replaced by blind egotism when treating of in- 
ternational relations. H. H. Powers is right, in a way ; 
but in prophesying the future he does not see the new 
forces which will be in the way of future wars and will 
make unjust wars impossible on the part of my country. 
By the great affection I feel for Latin America, and 
because I understand it better than most of my country- 
men, I recommend j^ou to arm yourselves to the full 
extent of your ability. After this war is over sad times 
are surely coming for the world. But while she 'arms, 
Latin America needs to develop itself educationally and 
economically. I do not forget that Brazil alone is bigger, 
territorially, than my country, excluding Alaska, and 
that it has as many or more natural resources than the 
United States. Chile, although so small, is a country 
whose mountains are in great part made of iron, and 
whose subsoil, in enormous extensions, is of coal. As 
these are the magnets of civilization, it will come to pass 
that great industrial centers will make of Chile a dense 
manufacturing country. Your country will make itself 
respected not for its natural undeveloped riches and its 
untrained population, but by the natural resources that 
are put to good use, which implies education of the 
people who develop these riches. China, with immense 
natural resources, and with an enormous population has 



88 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

not been able to make itself respected. Traditional 
fanaticism has impeded their penetrating to the depths 
of the earth and therefore its great deposits of iron only 
now are about to be exploited. 

I firmly believe that yonr hnsband is mistaken when 
he advocates the idea that the South American countries 
should forbid the development of the natural resources 
of their territories by foreign nations, and by my coun- 
try in particular. 

It is precisely capital that Latin America needs for 
its development. Capital has to come from the financial 
centers of the world. In importing such capital the 
younger nations give material and moral impetus to the 
dormant national forces. Seclusion in this epoch of 
internationalism is like the Chinese fanaticism that pre- 
vents the opening up of the entrails of the earth. To 
prevent foreign capital from carrying away too much of 
the national wealth, the Latin American governments 
ought, in mj^ opinion, always to be partners or stock- 
holders in these great foreign enterprises that are ex- 
ploiting your natural resources, and to invest the re- 
spective incomes in the education of all your citizens. 

I do not believe that the American who has brought 
and will in future bring his industrial enterprise to 
Latin America should necessarily be hated there. I 
know of many cases in which they are admired and be- 
loved. Your husband loses no opportunity to illustrate 
his points with jest and anecdote, taking for granted 
that these have a basis of truth, however great the 
exaggeration that makes us laugh. This method is some- 
what risky. I could also illustrate my statements with 
jokes and stories which, by analysis, would show no 
foundation of truth. That you may see the method is not 



IMPERIALISM 89 

seductive, I am going to top tlie story of the Ecuadorian 
who preferred filth to Americans, with an anecdote I 
heard in South America. 

A South American lady — I shall not say of what 
country — went to see a doctor because her leg pained her 
sorely. The doctor asked to see the leg uncovered so 
that he could examine it. The lady blushed and refused 
to permit it. Thinking that it was a case of bashfulness, 
the doctor insisted, whereupon the young lady admitted 
at last, red with shame : ' ' To-morrow, doctor, I am not 
prepared." The doctor understood, and told her that 
she might return the following day. The next day the 
doctor on examining the leg, and seeing nothing much 
the matter with it, wished to compare it with the other. 
Blushing again, the girl replied once more : ' ' To-morrow, 
doctor, I am not prepared." 

"Would it not be cruel to make a deduction from this 
story, madam? Let us pair off and forget the two 
anecdotes, the one about filth preferred to Americans, 
and that of the South American girl who was not pre- 
pared. 

Having studied well the two continents, we must come 
to the conclusion that the principal difference between 
the two Americas is in the more retarded evolution by 
Latin America. With the material and economic edu- 
cational advancement of Latin America, the differences 
between our two civilizations are disappearing. I be- 
lieve that the future activities of my countrj^ in the re- 
publics of the South are destined to bring about a greater 
evolutionary progress than that realized by European 
action. The American carries his spirit of progress 
wherever he goes. Note the case of the great plants 
for the extraction of copper in your country: Chuqui- 



90 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

camata, El Teniente and Potrerillos. The only place in 
Chile where the consumption of alcohol is not permitted 
is El Teniente of the Braden Copper Co. At Chuqui- 
camata, of the Chile Exploration Company, in regions 
formerly desolate, at ten thousand feet above the level 
of the sea, in the midst of a desert, Chileans have the 
best school of democracy. Not only has the American 
taken to this place a hundred million dollars, creating an 
industry that could not be made by Chilean capital, and 
giving life to a dead region, but an example is here shown 
to all the rest of the country of how to regard the human 
element in large modern industrial works. In a word, 
we are exporting copper from Chile and importing de- 
mocracy to Chile. This will apply to all Latin America, 
day by day, on a larger scale. 

A Latin America evolutionized to the diapason of 
the century 's advancement, a Latin America that cannot 
truthfully be taunted with a seventy per cent illiteracy, 
a thirty per mil mortality or a consumption of thirteen 
quarts of pure alcohol per head, will command respect 
because the banishment of illiteracy, the decrease in the 
death rate and higher culture bring in their trail added 
wealth, greater strength, better defense and more se- 
curity. 

Pardon, madam, this very long postscript to your hus- 
band's letter, and believe me to be 

Your Sincere Friend from Another Continent. 



CHAPTER V 



BLACK AND WHITE 



s 



HORTLT after sending off the foregoing notes, an- 
other letter arrived at the Censor's Office, which 
Miss Jones read with eager interest: 



Chicago, 111., 1918. 

My dearest : 



I have spoken to you at length about Yankee im- 
perialism and of its external ambitions but here within 
there is also another imperialism. Not only have the 
United States colonies in distant seas ; they have colonies 
on their own continent. They have imported colonies. 
Afroyankeeland is the great interior colony of this 
country, and never in the world's history has a colony 
been treated with more rigor and cruelty. 

The Yankees have enriched our language with several 
very significant words representing ideas purely their 
own, such as ^' bluff" and ''lynch." Lynch! In other 
countries this word has not been coined, simply because 
it has not been needed. One cannot think of negroes 
without thinking of lynch law, just as one cannot think 
of fire w^ithout smoke. 

The United States has about twelve million negroes, 
though some claim that the number reaches sixteen 

91 



92 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

million, if all those with some taint of African blood 
are inchided. These negroes are not intruders who 
have come to invade America of their own free will. 
The thirst for gold of the primitive planters brought 
them by main force from the Dark Continent, and here 
used them as beasts of burden. These negroes were 
hunted like wild animals on the coasts of Guinea. At 
first the captains of slave ships engaged in the hunt 
themselves, but centers were soon established along the 
African coast where negroes were purchased from the 
chiefs of the slave-hunting tribes. These centers were 
called slave markets. Once on board, the slaves were 
chained in couples and transported under much worse 
conditions than those now accorded to animals. Many 
succeeded in jumping overboard with their chains, pre- 
ferring death to the fate awaiting them. A captain 
always counted upon losing by involuntary death or 
from suicide a fourth part of his cargo of negroes, but 
the trade was always remunerative, since back in the 
year 1700 an adult negro v/as salable at from one hun- 
dred and twenty-five to two hundred dollars ; boys bring- 
ing from fifty to sixty. 

Soon the business of raising negroes grew in this 
country, on the same basis as breeding pigs and sheep. 
Virginia and Maryland were famous for their breeds of 
negroes, and healthy negro women were sold and forced 
to produce offspring with any male whom the master of 
the plantation might select. 

That is to say, these negroes of the United States 
came from Africa neither of their own free will, nor 
with pleasure, nor were those born here called to life 
by the yearnings of maternity, but by the ssrdid avarice 
of the American planter. 



BLACK AND WHITE 93 

"When -universal conscience abolished slavery on the 
face of the earth (and Chile, our country, was the first 
to abolish it in America) the United States had to abolish 
it also. This act of emancipation came later in the 
United States than in almost all Central and South 
American countries. Furthermore, when this country 
snatched from Mexico part of her territories, a conse- 
quence of the war over Texas, they implanted slaverj^ in 
the once Mexican territories, where it had already been 
abolished. 

And I believe with many thinkers, that the abolition 
of slavery in the United States was not the dictate 
of a collective superior conscience, but an economic strug- 
gle between the States of the North and the States of 
the South. The slave States could use negroes to good 
advantage on their cotton plantations, whereas the non- 
slave States of the North could not employ them in their 
industries, in which an ability was required that they did 
not possess. Therefore, I believe that it has not been 
a spirit of justice and humanity that has inspired the 
abolition of slavery in this country. 

At all events, I believe that the negroes would live 
happier to-day by returning to the slavery they "en- 
joyed" before. Every slave master would care for 
them, at least as much as he cares to-day for his cattle ; 
for it is only too true that the present condition of the 
negro is unbearable, and a disgrace to the United States. 
The prerogative of manhood is denied them here. 

In nearly all States a negro may not marry a white 
woman, nor vice versa, under penalty of fine, imprison- 
ment and absolute nullity of the marriage. I have read 
of a divorce granted to a married couple, happy until 
then, because a child born had crisp, curly hair and 



94 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

thick lips, indicating by this treacherous atavism that 
the mother — who appeared white, and who believed her- 
self to be white, and who her husband thought was white 
— had had among her progenitors one with a few drops 
of African blood in his veins. 

Negroes may not travel in southern States in rail- 
road cars used by the whites, nor are they received 
in hotels except those reserved exclusively for the col- 
ored race, nor may they attend the same schools as the 
whites. In the cemeteries blacks and whites must not 
rest together. The case has been cited of a mother who 
was not permitted to rest in eternal sleep beside her 
children on account of recent restrictions regarding the 
burial of whites and blacks in the same cemeteries. 
Why! there are buildings that have separate elevators 
for whites and blacks; you may enter one with a dog, 
but not with a negro. The negro is considered as a leper. 
If a negro buys a house in a white district even of a 
northern city like New York or Chicago (which the 
whites try to prevent at all costs), the contaminated 
district may be considered as dead for the whites; the 
value of all property in the vicinity falls immediately. 
Sometimes, real-estate firms take advantage of this 
method to depress the value of the property in a deter- 
mined ■ section of the city. They bring negroes to re- 
side there temporarily, and pocket huge profits by means 
of heavy purchases effected during the transitory slump 
in price which they have brought about themselves. 
Even the Trade Unions, with their famous proletarian 
solidarity, keep the negro at a distance. In Chicago no 
negro is permitted to become a member of the white 
workmen 's associations. 

It has been found impossible to send them all to 



BLACK AND WHITE 95 

certain States intended exclusively for them, nor eonld 
tliey be transported en masse to the Philippines or to 
Liberia ; therefore, they live in -the same cities as the 
whites and are seen everywhere, but do not even pray 
together since it has been found necessary to build 
separate churches for the negroes. Here there is a black 
Christ for the African Americans and a white Christ 
for the European Americans. A negro may distinguish 
himself greatly as did the famous Booker T. Washing- 
ton; he may even arrive at a position of extreme emi- 
nence, but the country will make an outcry if the Presi- 
dent should ask him to dinner — England makes no out- 
cry when the same negro is received by the King at 
Buckingham Palace. 

And what is a negro? All the rivers in the world, 
the Amazon and the Mississippi, the Danube and the 
Nile, the Yangtse Kiang and the Orinoco, the thousands 
and thousands of rivers in the world that throw their 
fresh water into the sea do not sweeten the water of 
the ocean; but one drop of negro blood that falls into 
the veins of a white man is enough to blacken entirely 
the man, his children, his grandchildren and his great- 
grandchildren. In Alabama the law says that a negro 
is one who has received black blood in any of the last 
five generations. 

Here the life of a negro is less respected than that 
of a dog. The newspapers tell day by day, as the most 
natural thing in the world, the news that a negro 
has been lynched. To lynch means to kill a defenseless 
man at the hands of a blood thirsty mob. This process 
takes many forms: beating to death, stoning, hanging 
the victim to a tree and even burning alive. 

These lynchings are sometimes perpetrated on one 



86 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

man, at other times on a great number. Not long ago 
there was a collective lynching in St. Louis. It was 
a St. Bartholomew of negroes. Spurred on by an un- 
justified agitation against them, the whites in a furious 
mob sought the negro quarters to wipe out the meek 
African population. In the pitiless massacre men, 
women and children fell. The white women, ladies, 
incited the assassins, and themselves used pins which 
they buried in the naked flesh of the despairing victims, 
who made heroic efforts to defend themselves. I did 
not witness this ; it occurred just before I arrived here, 
but I read about it in their own papers and magazines 
which had no motive in exaggerating the facts of this 
incident, but rather to conceal them. 

Do not suppose that these a.!re exceptional cases; 
they are of a frequency that makes them chronic. In 
Pine Bluff, a small village of Arkansas, there was on 
one occasion a dispute between white and black work- 
men. One fine day the white workers placarded the 
streets with posters bearing inscriptions that could be 
seen in the full light of the noonday sun by their black 
fellow workers: '^Negroes, take care. We 7ieed your 
jobs. We give you two weeks to leave the village or else 
suffer the penalty of death.' ^ The unhappy creatures 
had either to obey or die. 

In order that you may realize that the spirit of 
this lynch-law is in the souls of this people and that 
nobody can wrench it out, I will tell you that in the 
1903 conferences at the famous summer University of 
Chautauqua, one, Mr. John Temple Graves, of Atlanta, 
Georgia, proposed to his audience the legalization of 
lynch-law in the United States. ''Why not make lynch- 
ing legitimate by law?" he said. ''Lynching must con- 



BLACK AND WHITE 97 

tinue at all events ; why not give legal authority to the 
masses ? Why not provide them with the means of doing 
instantly and legally what they will do anyhow in 
defiance of the law?'^ And in this way the orator con- 
tinued to expound his thesis, himself an enthusiastic ad- 
herent of the right to lynch. 

Of course! As lynchings cannot be abolished, the 
only way in which these assaults can be saved from con- 
stituting an act of anarchy, and so safeguard the honor 
of American democracy, is to give the multitude, the 
mob, legal authority to lynch. What? Judges appointed 
by the people ? No, the people themselves accuser, judge, 
and executioner. Is not this government of the people, 
by the people and for the people? 

The spectacle of lynchings is unknown in the other 
countries of the world. It is a manifestation of the 
internal imperialism of the United States. And the 
imperialism of a democracy is the worst kind of im- 
perialism. The individual believes himself all power- 
ful, even to break laws and mete out justice to him- 
self. 

Can anything more cowardly than lynching be im- 
agined? It cannot even be compared with the Spanish 
fight of the toreador with the enraged beast. To- 
gether we attended a bull fight in Madrid. Do you 
remember? You almost fainted. And that horrible 
spectacle is the fight of a man against a furious animal, 
stronger than he. The aggressor runs all the risks 
of the struggle and often dies in the contest. Although 
the bull-fight is cruel (and I rejoice to think that we 
have not accepted it from old Spain, our mother coun- 
try), the sacrifice of a lusty bull at the hands of a 
fighter w^hom he may kill cannot be compared with the 



98 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

sacrifice of a defenseless man at the hands of a fnrious 
mob armed with stones and sticks. 

Further back in history, in the days of ancient Eome, 
another savage spectacle flourished ; the contest of gladi- 
ators ; neither can this feature of national cruelty, which 
has placed an opprobrious stamp on Eoman civilization, 
be compared with the American spectacle of lynchings. 
In the Roman arena it was a fight of man to man, a 
combat of muscles; in the American public square it is 
an armed mob against a defenseless person. At first the 
gladiators were recruited among criminals condemned to 
death or penal servitude by the laws of the Republic; 
later, when there were schools of gladiators to prepare 
professionals, the strongest and most valiant gladiators 
were admired as heroes, even to the extreme of Roman 
ladies soliciting their love. And yet, in spite of Roman 
cruelty, there were in those spectacles traits of pity and 
clemency unknown to American lynching. When the 
fallen gladiator raised his finger, asking mercy of the 
public, the latter often granted it by waving their hand- 
kerchiefs, whereupon the victorious gladiator had to 
cease his attacks. There is none of that old clemency 
in this modern martyrology of the United States, the 
emulator of Rome in the twentieth century. Two thou- 
sand years of Christianity have not softened, but hard- 
ened the souls of these modern republicans. 

This is the discipline that inspires North American 
character, and which has taught it to trample under foot 
the weak nations of Latin America — the small republics 
of Central America, Mexico and Colombia — and which 
even threatened us by bombarding unjustly and treach- 
erously our ports. It is the same spirit; it is lynching 
in distant seas. 



BLACK AND WHITE 99 

Thank God, we have no negroes in Chile; but many 
South American countries have a large African popu- 
lation. There you will not find the furious antagonism 
of races existing here, and never have I heard of lynch- 
ing in Brazil or Peru. This is an exclusive privilege of 
Anglo-Saxon America — of the country of democracy, of 
liberty and of equality. If they claim to set up this 
nation for us as a model, it means that we must learn 
from them this modern gladiatorism which surpasses as 
a spectacle of cruelty everything that history records. 

I think and think, I meditate and meditate, I study 
and study, I compare and compare, and I cannot under- 
stand how there are people blind enough to advise 
Latin America to look to this country for inspiration 
in her progress. 



Your husband who adores you 



Miss Jones felt no surprise in reading this letter. 
"When living in Spanish America, she had very often 
read in the local papers descriptions of the lynching of 
negroes, together with bitter censure of her country on 
■this account. 

Mss Jones had studied this problem with some in- 
terest, and had at her disposal authoritative sources of 
information to enable her to reply to the scathing indict- 
ment formulated by the Chicago correspondent. 

She was busy all day long in writing her comments, 
which took definite shape in these words: 



100 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Madam : 

The problem of the colored race in our country is 
one of the most serious we have to face; but I believe 
it to be a blessing for the negroes, a blessing for the 
United States and a blessing for humanity that it has 
fallen to us to face this problem. It is a commonplace 
to maintain that it would have been better never to 
have brought negroes as slaves to the United States. 
I do not think so. It has been better for them that 
they came, as I am going to show you, and better for 
America and for the world, because the most trans- 
scendental problem for the good understanding of the 
races on the earth is going to be solved in our country, 
and the most significant educational experiment in the 
world is here being made on a scale without precedent. 

In the days when Africans were brought to our 
coasts like beasts of burden, the slave trade was con- 
sidered lawful and moral all over the world. They 
were not brought here as an addition to our family or 
our nation. They were imported, literally, as if it 
were a matter of simple beasts of burden. It was even 
considered a crime to teach a negro to read. That was 
the sentiment of the times. Captain Hawkins, one 
of the initiators of the slave traffic, was knighted by 
Queen Elizabeth of England, and his coat of arms had 
for its insignia the bust of a negro with arms tied. 
In those times, madam, your ancestors were or were soon 
to be proprietors of negro slaves. 

In spite of all, even in those remote times in which 
the first negroes were imported to the United States, 
some chosen spirits of my country were already opposed 
to slavery, considering it a violation of human liberty. 

Only a deep ignorance of history, madam, and the 



BLACK AND WHITE 101 

tendency to follow the philosophy of those who in- 
terpret history from an exclusively economical point 
of view can explain why it has been said that the aboli- 
tion of slavery was a question of bread and butter in 
my country, an economic struggle between the North 
and the South. 

When the southern States decided to make them- 
selves independent, their objective was to perpetuate 
slavery in their territory. Any one who knows some- 
thing of the history of my country, must admit that if 
in the War of Secession the South had triumphed and 
we had seen two republics established on our soil, the 
liberation of slaves in these same southern States, that 
is to say in the new slave republic, would only have been 
a little delayed. 

When interpreting history, the importance of the 
economic factor cannot be denied; but they are blind, 
madam, who do not see in all triumphs of humanity, 
in spiritual triumphs, the ascending pathway of sublime 
endeavor, of higher ideals, which success has scaled. 
I believe humanity has become better and better through 
the centuries and the ages in consequence of work done 
by spirits highly gifted and inspired by the Christian 
principles of love, justice and truth, and by those who 
have sacrificed themselves in the belief that it was their 
duty to pay to the future the debt contracted with the 
past. I wish I were able to show you, in all its splendor, 
the monumental, grand, human staircase of effort, virtue, 
sacrifice, unselfishness, and generosity which brought 
freedom to the slaves in my country. This is a stairway 
with steps as clear and well defined^ as those which lead 
from the cellar to the topmost story of the gigantic Wool- 
worth Building in New York; only it is not of iron or 



102 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

cement ; it is of strong hearts, of tempered souls and of 
superior spirits. And as the visitor to Woolworth's 
temple of commerce does not see the marble steps, be- 
cause he takes the elevator, so also are the steps of this 
moral staircase invisible to the people who have not 
followed this marvelous history of effort step by step, 
but have been carried to the topmost story in the ele- 
vator of their fathers* achievements. 

In 1619 the first negroes landed in Virginia, and 
shortly afterwards slavery began to be organized in 
my country. Almost simultaneously, agitation against 
this slavery began. The first traces of the contest are 
lost in the past and the anonymous; they are vague, 
undetermined, without a clear consciousness of their 
further evolution. The names of these fighters are 
not recorded by history, just as it does not tell the 
name of him who cast the bronze out of which was to be 
fashioned the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. But let us 
consider some of these steps : / 

The first public protest of a religious body against 
slavery was made in 1688, in Pennsylvania, which was 
t»ut one of the English colonies. In 1729 Ealph Sandi- 
ford publishes ''The Mystery of Iniquity,'* a condem- 
nation of slavery. In 1737 Benjamin Lee publishes a 
book in which slavery is denounced. From 1746 to 
1767 John Woolman travels in the central and southern 
colonies preaching against slavery. In 1750 Anthony 
Benezet establishes a free school for negroes. In 177G 
Samuel Hopkins attacks slavery with pen and tongue 
and succeeds, in 1774, in having a law passed prohibiting 
the importation of negroes into Rhode Island, which 
was followed by the law of 1784 declaring free all 
<jhildren born of slaves in that State. In 1773 the doctor 



BLACK AND WHITE 103 

and philanthropist, Benjamin Rush, gives a lecture in 
Philadelphia against slavery, and in 1774 founds with 
James Pemberton the first anti-slavery society in my 
country, the secretary of which he was for many years. 
In 1786 an analogous society is formed in New Jersey. 
The same year another is founded in Rhode Island. 
In 1789 the society of Maryland is organized ' ' to promote 
the abolition of slavery and to better the conditions of 
the negroes/' In 1790 the pro-abolition society of Con- 
necticut is founded ; in the following year an analogous 
society in Virginia; and thus successively until all the 
States could boast of a society of this character. In 
1794 the first convention of pro-abolition societies takes 
place. In the convention of these societies at Baltimore 
in 1826 there were already one hundred and fifty so- 
cieties that gave an account of their efforts against 
slavery, six of them from the southern States. In 1831 
the publication of *'The Liberator" begins in Boston. 
In 1851 ''Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beeeher 
Stowe, appears, a book that shook the conscience of the 
country, so human that even to this day it is read with 
profound interest and is produced on the stage and on 
the screen. In 1863 the President of the United States 
proclaims the emancipation of the negroes. 

I have noted, madam, only some of the most salient 
points in this struggle for the liberation of the negroes, 
but I think they wiU suffice to prove to you that it is 
absurd to suppose that the emancipation of the negroes 
was a question of bread and butter in my country. It 
would be equally absurd to suppose that the present 
fight for prohibition and female suffrage is also a matter 
purely economical; and these campaigns of to-day are 
following the same road over which the pro-abolition 



104 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

campaign traveled. Abolition is to-day a historical word, 
as prohibition and suffrage will be to-morrow, white 
flags which have been left behind at places already 
passed in the Avenue of Progress. It is evident that in 
these struggles the detainers of privileges defend them- 
selves, their money and their economic position, but 
the forces struggling for the common progress and hap- 
piness do not and never have pursued the selfish purpose 
of a personal monetary interest. 

In my moments of dejection, madam, (who does not 
have them?), when I am disheartened to see the delay 
in attaining a social triumph for my country, I usually 
give new life to my troubled spirit by reading of those 
struggles of the past which call to memory the ups 
and downs of furious battles, resulting in the ultimate 
victories of yesterday. And this struggle for the eman- 
cipation of the slaves in my country is for me one of the 
most worthy of emulation. I read the very books of 
that period and my soul tmvels towards the past. 
I attend, for example, the martyrdom of Captain John 
Brown and listen to the speeches of Thoreau before 
and after the decapitation of the martyr in Concord, 
Mass., in 1859 and 1869; I associate myself with the 
life of Gerrit Smith, Aster's cousin, a millionaire who 
distributes gratuitously lots of land among the negroes, 
for whom he is founding schools; I hear the speeches 
and I follow the life of Wendell Phillips, whose name 
a high school in Chicago bears, which to-day among its 
seventeen hundred pupils counts three hundred and 
fifty negroes. This whole struggle of the past with its 
epic characters gives me strength for the struggles of 
to-day and prepares me for the struggles of to-morrow. 

Therefore, madam, I take the liberty of saying that 



BLACK AND WHITE 105 

only a profoi^d ignorance of history can make your 
husband believe that in the struggle for the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves of my country only economical interests 
have been involved. He also maintains that the negro 
would be much better off as a slave than under present 
conditions. Let us see. Your husband says, madam, 
that it has been a curse for the negro to have come here. 
First, he was a despised slave; his subsequent liberty 
.has profited him nothing, and he would be better off in 
his former state of slavery or perhaps in his primitive 
home in dark Africa. A more unfounded affirmation 
could not be made. I am sure that if all the negroes of 
my country were offered the opportunity of returning 
permanently, with passage paid by our government, to 
the negro Republic of Liberia or the negro Empire of 
Abyssinia, there would not be among their millions 
enough to fill the first-class staterooms of a transatlantic 
steamer. 

My country is called the melting pot of the world, 
the crucible in which all nationalities on the face of 
the globe are fused into a new race. The ruling ethnical 
element in this new nation, that has in store so many 
surprises for humanity, is European. Not with the in- 
tention of increasing our population, but simply of 
bringing human machines, we imported from Africa 
■cargoes of negroes under conditions which your hus- 
band has described to you. We brought over slaves 
whom we hunted in a savage continent. You have al- 
ready seen how these slaves were emancipated and be- 
came citizens of our republic. That is to say, the melting 
pot was not only composed of all nationalities of the 
Old World, but even Africa came to America ; and you 



106 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

may compare the African wliom we received with the 
Anacaliifs and Onas of Tierra del Fuego, a savage. 

Since the arrival of the negro on our shores we have 
commenced, first on a small scale, later, with his emanci- 
pation, on a larger scale, the monumental task of educat- 
ing the African on our soil. It is a gigantic missionary 
task, the most gigantic missionary enterprise ever under- 
taken in the world. Not that we could not have sent the 
negroes away, but that we did not want to do so. Many 
have wished it on different occasions, but the moral 
forces of the country have prevented it. You can see 
with what rapidity and ease we are sending millions of 
Americans to Europe and at the same time ammunitions 
and food in spite of all obstacles and submarines. The 
negro has come to our country to remain here, and he 
is protected in our country by the shield of American 
citizenship. 

Centuries of difference in evolution separated us will- 
ing European colonizers from the unwilling African 
colonizers. We understood that it was necessary to 
fill these centuries by means of education. It is not a 
simple task, madam, to educate millions of ex-slaves, ex- 
savages. You know hov/ in your own country educa- 
tion is still confined to a small privileged group. But it 
is edifying to see what has been done in fifty years. 
Let us compare conditions of the negroes since 1866, im- 
mediately after the triumph of the Civil War which 
gave them their liberty, up to 1916. Of course, the 
previous period, since the arrival of the first slaves till 
the time of the emancipation, marks a lengthy period of 
preparation of the race. 

In 1866 only ten per cent of the negroes could read; 
in 1916 more than sixty-five per cent could read. In 



BLACK AND WHITE 107 

1S66 there were one hundred thousand negro children 
attending public schools ; in 1916 there were one million 
six hundred and thirty-six thousand. In 1866 seven hun- 
dred thousand dollars were spent for the education of 
the negroes ; in 1916 fourteen million six hundred thou- 
sand dollars were spent. Institutions of public high 
school education for negroes represent a value of twenty- 
one million five hundred thousand dollars. The Indus- 
trial and Normal Institute of Tuskegee alone, founded in 
1881 by Booker T. "Washington, with the constant and 
very valuable help of the whites, which he has grate- 
fully acknowledged in his books, contains one hundred 
and three edifices. 

The negro population of the United States has only 
twenty-five per cent of illiterates, less than any South 
American republic. Your country has more than twice 
that proportion of illiterates and other countries have 
an even greater proportion. I have told you that there 
are one million six hundred and thirty-six thousand 
negro students in our educational institutes. Your coun- 
try, with a population equal to half that of the negro 
community in the United States, has only a little more 
than four hundred thousand students in its different 
educational institutes; and your country is one of the 
most advanced of Latin America. To arrive at a figure 
of one million six hundred thousand negro pupils, we 
■ have to take the aggregate for several Latin American 
countries, according to the most recent statistics. Brazil, 
Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and Paraguay 
united send the same number of children to their schools 
as does the negro population of my country, who num- 
ber twelve millions while the population of these seven 
republics reaches forty-one millions. Speaking of higher 



108 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

education, I can tell you that there are more profes- 
sional men and authors among the negroes of the United 
States than in any Latin American country. 

So much for the educational success of the negroes 
in my country. As regards their economic triumph, 
it will suffice to consider that our negroes possess to-day 
property valued at one billion dollars. It would be 
interesting for your husband to read books like one 
of Booker T. "Washington's, "The Negro in Business," 
which would show him whether the negro's present con- 
dition is better than his former slave condition. There 
are black millionaires, madam. The negro woman, 
Sarah Eector, earns six hundred dollars a day, far more, 
certainl}^, than does our President and more than all the 
Presidents of all the South American countries put 
together. 

Neither are the doors to the highest honors in my 
country closed to the negro. To convince you of this 
I will cite the case of the negro Bruce, born a slave, 
who became a senator, an honor that the negro race 
enjoyed for the first time when Hiram E. Revels, a 
negro, was elected a senator in 1870. On the other 
hand, very many negroes have been and are members of 
the legislatures of several States. More than twenty 
have been elected representatives to the Federal Con- 
gress. 

No doubt, madam, the lynching of negroes, unfor- 
tunately so frequent in my country, has no possible 
justification. Nevertheless, your husband exaggerates 
when he says that every day the newspapers tell of the 
lynching of a negro as the most natural thing in the 
world. At all events, these are quite frequent and con- 
stitute a disgrace for us which I cannot fail to recognize. 



BLACK AND WHITE 109 

But in tliis as in every other case, when a custom is 
under observation it is necessary to imagine a curve 
drawn through time in order to see whether the trend 
is for the custom to be intensified or to fall into disuse. 

Since 1885 statistics of lynchings have been made in 
my country, and they show that this shameful practice 
is diminishing with time. Let us take the statistics 
for the thirty years from 1885 until 1915 and we dis- 
cover : 

From 1885 to 1891 there were 1726 lynchings. 

From 1895 to 1904 there were 1239 lynchings. 

From 1905 to 1914 there were 701 lynchings. 

These figures include the lynching of both negroes 
and white men. 

Lynching is always the result of a movement of in- 
dignation to punish a misdeed, the multitude fearing 
that ordinary justice will be trifling or tard}^ It is a 
collective act governed by the principles of the psy- 
chology of the multitude, in which the individual loses 
completely his individuality and in a large degree his 
responsibility. The motive power for an act of this 
nature, as I have said, is a feeling of indignation and a 
desire to punish a delinquent who has offended society. 
Then, the multitude follows its first impulses, blinded by 
contagion. Many acts of collective heroism are acts of 
contagion, inspired by the gestures of a leader. In 
. the same way, many acts of collective cruelty have the 
same cause. An act of justice imposed by the multitude 
was to throw into Boston harbor the cargoes of tea as a 
protest against the unjust taxes that the mother country 
wished to impose on the colonies. 

In the early days of the republic, when we made the 
conquest of the South and the West, it happened that 



110 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

men established themselves there and began to control 
nature's forces without first establishing the majesty of 
the law with all its necessary formalities. Almost with- 
out judges, each one had to mete out justice by hioa- 
self. Lynching originated as a punishment for the 
crime of assault on a white woman's honor committed 
with violence by a negro. The public, indignant at the 
horror of this crime, had not sufficient control over itself 
to await the slow action of justice. The fact that this 
has been the principal cause of lynchings is responsible 
for the absence of a reaction strong enough to put an 
end once and for all to these irritating spectacles. But 
I must stop this discussion of lynching lest you may 
come to think that I favor the practice. I condemn it, 
madam, most emphatically, just as my whole country 
condemns it, with a few exceptions. 

Here is another point regarding which your husband 
does not do us justice : He says that we do not protest 
against these lynchings. A powerful movement is work- 
ing throughout the country against the practice of lynch- 
law. I take at random from a daily paper this notice: 
' ' The directorate of The San Antonio Express has estab- 
lished a fund of one hundred thousand dollars to combat 
and punish those guilty of lynching. Out of this fund 
will be paid five hundred dollars for the arrest and 
conviction of any person who has taken part in the 
lynching of a white man and one thousand dollars in 
the case of the victim being a negro. ^' 

There is an essential difference between the way in 
which we regard these acts and how we proceed to 
discountenance them, as compared with the acceptation 
of the spectacle of bull-fights in Spain and the ancient 
gladiatorial combats of Rome. In Madrid the King 



BLACK AND WHITE 111 

attends the bull-fights. Charles Y himself dispatched 
a bull on the occasion of a corrida held to celebrate 
the birth of his son, Philip II. It is certain that noth- 
ing short of a revolution would break out in Spain 
if it were proposed to abolish bull-fighting by law. 
Even though Spain is such a Catholic coimtry, the very 
Popes who attempted to stop the sport failed to do 
so. In Rome the nobles maintained numerous glad- 
iators, always ready to engage in mortal combat. The 
custom was applauded in Rome even by thinkers of 
the greatest renown. Both Cicero and Pliny the young- 
er defended this practice, extolling it as a means of 
combating the fear of death. 

To do ourselves full justice we must also remember 
all we are doing for the good of the African race. I cite 
for instance the hundreds of thousands of whites who 
have aided the negro race in its career of betterment, 
and also the whites who died in our Civil War fighting to 
free the negroes, not forgetting those others who have 
exposed their life in peace-time to save a negro in danger. 
You know that there is a Carnegie Institution which 
rewards acts of heroism. Between 1905 and 1912 this 
Institute has distinguished twenty-eight white men and 
women, awarding them or their heirs prizes of medals or 
money for acts of heroism while trying to save negroes 
in danger, often at the cost of their own life. 

Even the dark clouds have their silver lining, madam. 
The negro has been paying a contribution in blood for 
the right to pass from a state of slavery to that of 
civilized man. But in .my country, more white blood 
has been shed for the negroes than black for the whit^. 

It is true, madam, that in my country there is no 
racial mingling between negroes and whites, since we 



112 TEE GULF OF 3II8UNDEBSTANDING 

do not desire this approximation. There is a race antag- 
onism between us, which T7e do not feel towards any 
European race, but which prevails only against Asia and 
Africa. These are races so different from ours that 
many suppose, for reasons apparently well founded, that 
there is no advantage to be gained by amalgamation 
with them. Nevertheless, of all the states in the Union, 
only twenty-nine have laws that consider marriage be- 
tween whites and blacks illegal. Even less in number 
are the states in which the law prohibits negroes and 
whites to attend the same schools, to travel in the same 
cars, to occupy without distinction the same seats in 
theaters and public libraries, or to be buried in the same 
cemeteries. 

In order to understand the spirit guiding the south- 
em states in which existnig laws separate whites from 
blacks, it is necessary to bear in mind that the African 
was a slave there until only a little more than fifty years 
ago. Withal the negro is gaining socially in proportion 
as his education advances. Not even in the southern 
states can the condition of the negroes be compared 
with that of peoples subjected to the yoke of European 
nations, such as Poles, Jews and Armenians. 

My country believes in educating the negroes, as it 
believes in educating the Esquimaux, the whites, or the 
Philippine Islanders; and this negro problem is one 
only of education, in which I believe we have passed 
the period of laboratory experiments. It has already 
been proven that the African is just as susceptible of be- 
ing educated as any other race. 

Unquestionably, it would be absurd to raise the negro 
immediately to the highest activities of abstract thought. 
Nor can it be expected that the negroes will be able 



BLACK AND WHITE U8 

within a generation or two to place themselves on the 
same level as the whites, who have enjoyed thousands of 
3^ears of civilization. In my opinion the Normal and 
Industrial Institute of Tuskegee has solved, in the most 
intelligent way, the problem of educating the negro, and 
at the same time it has taught the world how the white, 
yellow, red and all other races should be educated. An 
integral education — industrial, intellectual and human 
at the same time — it teaches how to do, to understand 
and to feel; it prepares the hand, the brain and the 
heart. Before long the country will see widespread the 
results attained by this school. 

That the negro has developed wonderfully through 
contact with the white is shown in a manner which 
carries good augury for the future, by the fact that 
large numbers of negroes have distinguished themselves 
in all human activities, in science, literature, painting, 
finance, war and agriculture. Let it suffice to mention 
the names of Booker T. Washington and Robert William 
Stanley, famous negro educators; Paul Lawrence Dun- 
bar and William Stanley Braithwaite, poets of great 
renown; W. E. Gurghardt du Bois, writer; Henry 0. 
Tanner, painter; Harry T. Burleigh, musician and com- 
poser, and May Howard Jackson, sculptress. 

To prove to you the sympathy of the whites and their 
desire to aid negroes who distinguish themselves, let 
us recall that back in the days of the beginning of slav- 
ery in 1761, a little negro girl born in Africa, in Senegal, 
was bought in America by Mrs. Susannah Wheatley and 
was treated in her home so kindly that Mrs. Wheatley 's 
daughter taught her to read and helped her with her 
books and studies, placing in her hands not only the 
Bible, but even the Latin classics. The slave showed 



114 THE GULF OF 31ISUNDERSTANDING 

such disposition for learning that her masters encouraged 
her aptitudes, gave her her liberty and came to look 
upon her as a member of the family. She was even 
taken to England on a special voyage for the benefit of 
her health. She became the first negro poetess of re- 
nown, Phyllis Wheatley, hailed as the laureate of Bos- 
ton. This has constantly been the attitude of the whites 
towards a negro who has distinguished himself. 

Weighing all this in the scales of justice, I firmly be- 
lieve that my country will be shown to have done more 
for this negro race formerly brought here to slavery, 
than any other country would have done under the same 
circumstances. It positively is doing more for them than 
any republic of Central or South America or any of 
their own countries, governed by their own race, like 
Abyssinia or Liberia are doing for their own negroes. 

The newspapers of Latin America, madam, never miss 
an opportunity to publish details of IjTichings, but very 
seldom can they find space for impartial records of our 
labors to uplift the African element in our midst. Simi- 
larly, our newspapers are too prone to print in full the 
news or revolutions, changes of government, and earth- 
quakes in Latin America, while neglecting to chronicle 
items referring to the struggle of those countries for 
progress. This divorces and separates us. Pardon me, 
therefore, for having added these notes to your hus- 
band's letter; otherwise you would have formed a mis- 
taken and unjust opinion. 

A Frisnd from the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER YI 



AFTER duly mailing the letter on the negro prob- 
lem in the United States, Mss Jones was left 
anxiously waiting* for the next communication 
from the Chicago correspondent. She wondered what 
subject he would choose now to write about to his wife. 
Her curiosity was satisfied before two weeks had gone 
by. The correspondent had selected a theme for each of 
ids long letters with the orderly method of one who is 
writing a book. This time he spoke of Woman's Suf- 
frage, as follows: 

Chicago, 1918. 

' My dearest: 



Just fancy yourself putting on your hat some fine day 
and going out ' ' to perform your civic duties " as a voter 
for such and such a candidate in an election of Senators 
or Representatives. Can you imagine anything more 
ridiculous than a woman going to the polls to vote? 
But this is nothing ; just imagine yourself seated in the 
Senate or House of Representatives proposing a Bill for 
the taxation of saltpetre or copper exports, or else — ^be- 
cause woman suffrage in the United States is coming 
to this — elected as a judge and sentencing to death a 

iia 



(116 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

criminal for having murdered a man on tlie high-road. 

The intervention of woman in polities would mean 
her moral degeneration ; politics are dirty, and we should 
keep our women undefiled. 

Here are some paragraphs cut at random from the 
newspapers I read. If I am always able to give cor- 
rect references, with names and figures, to things and 
cases here, it is because I have made it a habit to cut 
out from the newspapers and keep in my portfolio any 
items which attract my attention. One reads: ''Miss 
Katheryn Sellers has been appointed judge of the 
Juvenile Court in "Washington. This is the first time 
that a woman has been appointed a judge in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia." ''Miss Jeannette Rankin, member 
of the House of Representatives, has been nominated 
by the State of Montana as a candidate for Senator in 
the Federal Congress." "Miss Hay, president of a com- 
mittee in the Convention of the Republican Party, read 
before the members the new program of the party." 
And so on in this wise. 

The modern American feminism means the evasion 
of woman from the home and her invasion of the realm 
which has been exclusively for man since the beginning 
of the world; and this kind of feminism is gaining 
ground here at the rate of geometrical progression. It 
is winning over the most representative men a§ fast as 
an epidemic gains ground in a Chinese quarter. Until 
a short time ago President AVilson was passive, if not 
opposed to woman suffrage. In his latest book, '^The 
New Liberty," he does not even refer to women's claim 
to intervene in the electoral contests; but now we see 
him sending personal letters to the Senators, asking them 
to vote in favor of a Federal law giving to women the 



WOMAN'S SUFFEAGE 117 

right of voting. His letter to Senator Shields of Ten- 
nessee, whicli has been widely pnblished, is the most 
significant propaganda in favor of woman suffrage. Of 
course, Eoosevelt is also another ardent adherent.* Wom- 
an's suffrage has already conquered the most represent- 
ative men of the country. 

At present there are eleven States besides the Terri- 
tory of Alaska in which women have exactly the same 
electoral rights as men. The first of those States to 
win the political liberty of women was "Wyoming. This 
was in 1869, the year in which I was born; one of the 
last was Nevada, which made this conquest in 1914, and 
recently New York has had this trmmpJi. 

To-day more than three million six hundred thousand 
women may vote in the United States to elect the Presi- 
dent of the Republic. A glance at the feminist map of 
the country shows that this is principally a conquest of 
the West, of that part of the Eepublic where virgin land 
has been colonized in freedom from any of the restric- 
tions that Old Europe has imposed on the East. It seems 
to me unquestionable that before long, possibly while I 
am here, a law will be passed, giving, in all States, the 
same electoral rights to women as to men. When this bill 
was presented to Congress in 1914 it obtained in the 
Senate a majority of votes, but in the House of Repre- 
sentatives it was defeated by a vote of two hundred and 
four against one hundred and seventy-four. To-day 
this same bill that amends the Constitution has been ap- 
proved by a large majority in the House of Representa- 
tives. Investigations made a priori by the suffragettes 
show that in the Senate it has a large majority, but not 

* Roosevelt was still alive when this letter is supposed to Jhave 
been writtea. 



118 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

tlie two-thirds needful. Of the candidates to the Sen- 
ate for the next election, thirty-two have declared them- 
selves in favor of woman suffrage. At present there is 
being carried on in the newspapers, on platforms, in the 
magazines and at meetings a most forceful campaign in 
favor of the law. Women are constantly going to jail 
for breaking the law in their fights for su^rage. To- 
day all political parties have added to their platforms 
the proposal to extend to women all the political rights 
of men. 

The foregoing will surprise you, although we read to- 
gether in Chile much about Yankee woman suffrage, 
and though once we were highly amused when a cable 
brought the news that a woman fainted in Congress 
on voting for the declaration of war against Germany. 
However, you need not be astonished at this. EeservQ 
ypur amazement for the day when we shall see a woman 
President of the Supreme Court or President of the 
Republic. 

I have no fears of this Yankee extravagance extend- 
ing its contagion to us, although we have lately been 
assimilating everything which comes from this .country. 
To pass a law for v\^oman suffrage among us would sim- 
ply mean doubling the value of the men's vote. Where 
is the wife in our countries who would vote in opposi- 
tion to her husband ? Or if she is a spinster, in opposi- 
tion to the vote of her father? Here, in the United 
States where the home does not exist, where every mem- 
ber of a family professes a different religion and has a 
different conception of life, it is easily understood how 
the husband may be a republican and his several wives — 
the present one and those he has divorced — ^may be demo- 
crats or socialists. 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE , 119 

In our country woman is such an integral part of the 
home that she is logically always of the same opinion as 
her father or her husband. The same is true in Ger- 
many and Japan and France and Italy. Woman suf- 
frage signifies the dissolution, the breaking up of the 
home. The case has been cited here of a woman whose 
husband was a candidate for the House of Representa- 
tives and who not only did not vote for him, but even 
delivered speeches in public in favor of the candidate 
opposing her own husband. They were not divorced 
and even maintained that they loved each other, but in 
questions of ideas and politics they were of different 
opinions. This is a typical feature of Yankee psychol- 
ogy. 

Unquestionably our women are more sensible than 
Yankee women. I am sure that they would not accept 
the right to vote even if it were offered them by Con- 
gress on a silver ivay. Because they are ivomen. Here 
there are three sexes. The American suffragist consti- 
tutes very definitely a completely new sex that is making 
its appearance for the first time in history. It is neither 
woman nor man. 

It has always been one of the typical characteristics 
of woman to belong to the home as the oyster to the shell. 
The oyster dies when taken out of its shell ; in the same 
way woman out of the home surely dies. "What con- 
tinues to live is not a v/oman, it is a neuter being. It is 
an attribute of v/oman to busy herself in beautifying 
and making the home of the family attractive, in cooking 
and in the bringing up of the children, while she leaves 
to man, whom God made strong, the duty of earning 
what is necessary for the maintenance of the home. 
Woman always leans on man. 



120 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

This new sexual American type, this new genus, which 
is neither feminine nor masculine, takes as much care of 
its home as the hen does of the shell out of which its 
mother hatched it. Generally speaking, the American 
woman only sleeps in her house. For meals there are 
restaurants of every imaginable type, from the most 
sumptuous, in which nearly every one seated at a table 
has his own waiter (I am told, but I cannot believe it, 
that in New York there is a restaurant where they em- 
ploy as waiters only ruined European counts and mar- 
quises) to the restaurant in which every one goes to the 
kitchen, which is in full view (cafeteria), to serve him- 
self, and to the automatic restaurant where on inserting 
a coin in a slot a couple of fried eggs appear or a stream 
of coffee. When cooked dishes can be obtained auto- 
inatically, why make them at home? Are we not for- 
sooth in the twentieth century? 

Moreover, when the cooking is done at home, as a 
rare exception, do you think there is any house in the 
United States where it takes three or four hours to cook 
a meal as in our country? No. Everything comes 
ready made in cans, even soup, and besides, all kinds of 
cooked dishes may be bought at the Delicatessen Stores. 
Not long ago I saw in a newspaper of Chicago, The Post, 
a funny story in four cartoons. In the first the hus- 
band asks his wife for his dinner. In the second the 
husband starts to read the newspaper while waiting for 
the meal which his wife has not yet begun. The gentle- 
man has not read the first title of the first news article 
when his wife tells him that dinner is ready. 

The husband goes into the dining-room but sees no 
food on the table. ''What do you mean by saying that 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE 121 

dinner is ready?" her husband asks her. "There is 
only one thing lacking," his wife replied. ''What?" 
*'The can-opener." 

The menu was: Canned soup, stuffed bottled olives, 
beans cooked in cans and so on. This story has for us a 
humorous meaning very different to that which Ameri- 
cans see in it. For us the joke is that the meal is en- 
tirely composed of canned food ; for the American it is to 
be found in the fact that since the can-opener was lack- 
ing, in reality everything was lacking; Just as if we 
should speak of a woman about to be married, who has 
everything needful except a husband. At least this is 
how I understand it. The soldier is characterized by his 
rifle, the painter by his brush, and the housekeeper of 
an American house by her can-opener. 

In an article published in a magazine under the title 
''Why Women Do Not Marry," the author, a woman, 
says that this is due in part to the fact that women 
have learned to take care of themselves, but also adds, 
with much emphasis, that it is because men are not mod- 
ern, but ^'out of date/' antiquated and have been asleep 
for two or three generations, and because many things 
have happened in the world of which they are entirely 
ignorant. 

At a meeting of the National American Association of 
Woman Suffrage, which took place in Philadelphia, one 
of the leaders of the movement said : ' ' Ought we women 
to leave the laws of the country exclusively in the hands 
of men, who after the day's work return home tired and 
incapable of considering the serious aspects of life ? ' ' 

Oh! The speeches of these suffragettes are enough 
to make one roar with laughing. All this w^ould be a 



122 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

simple question of vaudeville if it were not that it is 
taken quite seriously here and that men say amen to 
everything they propose. At first, when all the suffra- 
gettes were homely old maids they objected, but now 
that every woman has joined the movement they have 
been forced to give way. 

Thus, we see that this woman who has nothing to do 
in the home beyond asking her husband to use the can- 
opener, invades all the activities of man in his work; 
she enters triumphantly into politics; she competes 
openly with man in his activities, even to the point of 
bringing bitter competition into the struggle of life. And 
man is surrendering to this new master. To-day noth- 
ing is more common than to see a man washing dishes at 
home. In advice given by newspapers and magazines 
to women in the women's section I have many times 
read this : ' ' Find out if your sweetheart helps his mother 
to wash the dishes ; if he has not the spirit of helping in 
the kitchen, do not marry him. ' ' 

I think some day there will be a new revolution in the 
United States. This time, not on account of the negroes, 
but on account of the women. Men will arm to defend 
themselves against this woman, who will no longer be a 
woman, since she is voluntarily renouncing her sex. 

Men do not realize here what this invasion of woman 
means, this domination of woman, this denaturalization 
of woman. Woman is the ''boss,'' the master of the 
United States. She will soon dictate the legislation of 
the whole country. 

She herself is above the law. It is interesting to note 
the great trials in this country in which women have ap- 
peared as criminals. Almost always they are acquitted : 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE 123 

*'Noi guilty. '^ Not long ago a sensational case was 
discussed, that of Miss Grace Lusk. In her first trial she 
was condemned to several years ' imprisonment ; but this 
was because instead of killing her lover, she killed the 
sweetheart of her lover. Between a murdered woman 
and a woman assassin the sympathy of the jury is with 
the murdered woman ; but between a murdered man and 
a woman assassin, the sympathy of the jury is with the 
assassin. 

This favoritism of the law towards woman can be 
seen from day to day in this country. One example 
will be enough. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a woman 
appeared before the judge with a complaint that her 
husband would not allow her dog to sleep in the same 
bed with them, as if it were their child. The man pro- 
tested that the dog was dirty, had fleas, snored and dis- 
turbed him at night, making it impossible for him to 
work the next day. The woman maintained that it was 
the best behaved dog in the world, much more so than 
her husband, and the most lovable creature. (I do not 
know if you are acquainted with the fact that there is 
in almost every large city in this country a cemetery 
for dogs, with mausoleums and even epitaphs.) The 
charge of the woman in this case, against her husband, 
will probably seem to you on the face of it preposterous ; 
but even more preposterous was the decision of the 
judge. He fined the husband twenty dollars, and, as he 
had not the money, he was sent to jail for twenty days. 

Women ought to oppose this method in the interpreta- 
tion of the law. If they consider themselves entitled to 
the same rights as men, they ought to face the conse- 
quences of law on an equality of conditions. They ought 
to conduct themselves like a young lady whose acquaint- 



124 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

ance I made in the hotel and who entered a trolley car 
in which all the seats were taken. I immediately offered 
her my seat, but she refused to accept it. Asking her 
why she did so, she answered me: *'I do not see why 
you offer your seat to a woman and not to one of the men 
standing. I am neither weaker nor inferior." 

Talking the other day with another American lady, 
she told me that she was of the opinion that wedding 
rings should be abolished, since this was a survival of 
the times when woman was the slave of man. That 
woman did not even stop to think that some men also 
wear a wedding ring. She also said that the custom of 
throwing rice and old shoes at the newlj^weds should be 
suppressed, as that was a survival of the time when men 
abducted women, whereas to-day they went of their own 
free will. She asked me if in Chile we also throw shoes 
at newly married couples, and I answered that there the 
bridegroom throws coins to the people in the street fol- 
lowing the pair from the church. 

'^Oh," she said to me, *'that is a survival of the times 
when men bought their wives. The world is still bound 
to the past, but a new era is now being born ; man will 
no longer be the master of the earth ; the turn of woman 
has arrived, she who has been the slave of man for cen- 
turies. ' ' 

She was very much astonished to hear of the condi- 
tions of our women, which I described as best I could, 
wishing to impress her with the happiness of our homes ; 
but all her comment was this : ' ' We are still very busy 
with our campaigns within this country; but we shall 
soon begin to send women missionaries to foreign coun- 
tries, just as our churches are doing." 



W03IAN'S SUFFRAGE 125 

So tliat we must prepare ourselves to receive Ameri- 
can suffiagette missionaries, who will not mind if tlie 
people thiow stones at them, because they are even ac- 
customed to go to jail, the victims of their civilizing 
campaigns. 

From everything that I have been able to observe, it *^ 
seems to me that here in love affairs the roles have been 
reversed, and that the women make love to the men. 
They are creating a new philosophy of life. Women 
here write many more novels and dramas than men. 
There are more girls studying in the high schools than 
boys, and the same tendency is seen in colleges and uni- 
versities. 

It seems to me, however, that men are beginning to 
feel this new servitude. During all the months that I 
have been here, I see from day to day without a single 
exception, in one of the newspapers of this city. The Chi- 
cago Herald and Examiner^ a cartoon section with this 
general heading, ^^Let the wedding hells ring out," 
wherein the theme, exploited in every imaginable form, 
is man, the victim of woman by marriage. I do not 
know if this is a sign that men are beginning to open 
their eyes. 

The wildest inconsistencies seem to be the rule in this 
country. Here is one of them : I believe that in no coun- 
try in the world is the Bible more venerated than in the 
'United States. In every important hotel, in every room, 
there is a copy for each traveler. Well then, the Bible 
says in a hundred and one different places that the wife 
must abide by the will of her husband, that the wife 
must obey her husband. This is a biblical precept that 
has been respected during twenty centuries of Chris- 



126 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

tianity. How is it that this country, which reveres the 
Bible, acts in such open contradiction of it? 



Your affectionate husband 



Miss Jones finished reading this letter without any 
bitter feeling; on the contrary, it made her laugh heart- 
ily. At first she thought the best way would be to an- 
swer the letter in a vein of burlesque; but, fearing to 
wound the susceptibilities of her unknown friend, she 
wrote thus: 

Madam : 

I do not object to the facts, the information that your 
husband gives you in all his letters. Much of this data 
is taken directly by him from our most authorized 
sources, from our own statistics, but when he gets his 
notions from newspaper paragraphs, as in the case of the 
woman who succeeded in having her husband put in jail 
because he would not allow her dog to sleep with them, 
it would be better not to take them too literally. The 
journalist, in order to impress his reader and publish 
something different, very often exaggerates one detail of 
a piece of news, giving the most prominence to the least 
important part. Probably in the case to which your 
husband refers, the woman complained of cruelty. Per- 
haps the dispute arose from the incident of the dog 
sleeping with them, and in the course of the quarrel 
he maltreated his wife. Hence the fine. 

There is nothing more dangerous, madam, than a little 



i 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE 127 

of the truth, because tJiat little leads to the belief that an 
assertion is true in its entirety; jnst as, in the world 
of physics, a ton of coal has power to move for one mile 
thousands of tons of material, so also in the moral world, 
an ounce of truth is strong enough to drag a ton of lies 
for thousands and thousands of miles. Never trust, 
madam, to a little of the truth. Truth cannot be taken 
like whiskey, with soda; but only pure, like milk. This 
is the besetting sin, in my opinion, of your husband ^s 
letters, in which he formulates his doctrines from an 
unusual paragraph in a newspaper, from a conversation 
with a crazy woman, from a quotation of a speech in this 
country where every one believes himself authorized to 
voice his ideas and sentiments. But in general, madam, 
I do not object to the *'data" and the ''facts'' that your 
husband gives you. I do object to his interpretation of 
them. 

Above all, in order to judge these problems of wom- 
an's suffrage in the different countries, it is necessary 
to bear in mind a very special circumstance. In Latin 
countries, in Germany and in Japan, the family is the 
social unit; on the other hand, in our country, the indi- 
vidual is the social unit. I think that I have read that 
formerly in Japan the family was so much the social 
unit of the Empire that when one of its members was 
condemned to death, the sentence very often included 
the whole of the family. Among us, if the husband is 
sentenced to prison, his wife has the right to ask for a 
divorce, and also the right to marry another man, if she 
wishes. Among us, each individual, man or woman, is a 
*' social unit"; in the Latin-American countries, to a 
certain extent, the family is the ' ' social unit. ' ' And this 
explains why your husband cannot imagine how a 

; 



128 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

woman in Chile could think differently to her husband 
in matters of politics. This also explains in part why in 
those countries children enjoy the social prerogatives of 
their parents on a much larger scale than in my country, 
even when they have inherited neither their merits nor 
their fortunes. 

The most elemental of her rights, that of patria po- 
testaSy is denied to the woman of your country. A 
widow is not permitted to administer the estate of her 
children in their minority, whereas a widower is en- 
titled to do so. If, after the unwinding of much red 
tape, she obtains permission from the court to act as 
her children's trustee, the law compels her to render 
periodically written account of her administration, just 
as if she were a minor herself. 

Over there woman is, economically and politically 
speaking, a thing; she has neither independence nor in- 
dividuality of her own. As in Japan, this conception of 
responsibility of the whole family for a delinquency 
committed by one of its members has changed, so also 
the individual all over the world is gaining his person- 
ality and his independence. We already see that even 
in France and in Italy, countries where the family is the 
social unit, the campaign for woman suffrage is progress- 
ing. In France the principle of feminine municipal 
vote has been accepted ; and after the war, you will see 
how the French woman will win all her electoral rights. 
The scarcity of men has obliged the women there to work 
in the factories, and they are beginning to understand 
that thej^ have new responsibilities and new rights. Even 
in Germany the women are holding meetings, asking for 
woman suffrage. In Latin America education of the 
women is a very recent thing and is still very limited, but 



W03IAN'S SUFFRAGE 129 

in proportion as the education of the women advances, 
the way of judging of woman will change, and she will 
come to be a social unit. 

For a long time the problem of the mental inferiority 
of woman has been debated, and a large number of 
**wise men" have come to the conclusion that we are 
inferiorly gifted, because among other reasons, our con- 
tributions to the world of science, art, and literature 
have been almost nothing compared with those of man. 
These "wise men" have not taken into consideration, 
however, that for centuries knowledge and instruction 
have been monopolized by man, leaving to us only the 
simple domestic tasks. This has been responsible for the 
conviction, universally held by Germany, that woman 
is reserved only for these three cults: '^Kilche, Kirche, 
Kinder" (cooking, church, children). 

Now, however, people are looking at things through 
different prisms. The education of the woman has been 
extended throughout the world and very particularly in 
my country; and even when one cannot gain in a gen- 
eration the fruit that man gathers as the consequence 
of a legendary culture, woman is proving, in all activi- 
ties, the immense capacity that she had neither developed 
or utilized in past centuries. 

Your husband has courteously refrained from telling 
you in any part of his letter that woman is intellectually 
inferior to man. I think I have no reason to debate this 
point with you. It seems to me we shall agree on this 
matter. Both of us are women and it would be hateful 
to recognize our inferiority. The mere fact that your 
husband confides his social impressions of my country 
to you is proof that he puts you intellectually on the 
same level as himself. 



130 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Discarding all this, there remain only two aspects 
of the woman suffrage problem. The first is the prob- 
lem of right and of justice; the second is the problem 
of social convenience, whether or no it is advantageous 
to have woman's contribution in matters of collective 
interest. These two aspects, madam, I wish to discuss 
with you in these notes. I take pleasure in advance in 
thinking that you are going to agree with me. 

If we admit the intellectual and moral equality of 
woman with respect to man, I do not see by what pretext 
the legislator can deprive her of the right of electing 
authorities who, with their laws, have so much influence 
in her destiny. 

If we were to admit for a moment what your husband 
says, that woman thinks — or ought to think — politically 
exactly like her father or her husband, the result would 
be that the vote of the married man would have twice 
the value of that of the bachelor, and the father of three 
daughters would have a fourfold vote. I see no harm 
in either of these contingencies, but, on the other hand, 
the widow, the woman without parents and the inde- 
pendent woman would each have her individual vote, 
and here I can see only advantages. However, I do 
not understand why, in the most intimate and loving 
homes, woman should not have an independent vote and 
opinion. Woman studies problems that are related di- 
rectly with herself from a point of view very often dif- 
ferent from that of man. The problems of education, 
of drink, of commercialized vice, of gambling, of child 
labor and of factory conditions affect very deeply the 
feminine conscience. Is it just that the assistance of 
the brains and heart of woman be disregarded in these 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE 131 

problems, circumscribing all her activities to the three 
German Ks? 

In my country we have given the right of voting to 
the negroes and to the most uncultured elements of our 
population. Why not to the cultured woman? Is it 
not unjust to maintain one-half of the population, which 
has to obey the laws, without the right of electing those 
who are going to make the laws ? 

Can a country call itself a democracy, that is to say, a 
government of the people, by the people and for the peo- 
ple, when it withholds citizenship from half its popula- 
tion ? The letter of President Wilson to Senator Shields, 
to which your husband alludes, says that in a large 
measure the morals of this country and of the world will 
rest in our sincere adherence to democratic principles; 
it will depend on the action that the Senate takes in this 
matter now so critically important. The President re- 
fers here to the simple aspect of justice, and he under- 
stands that this country cannot be fighting for democ- 
racy in the world while democracy is limited to the 
males. 

I do not believe, madam, that our world, the feminine 
world, ends at the door of our home, that we have noth- 
ing to do but with that which is within our home. Our 
home extends beyond the portals. Woman has like man, 
perhaps more so, a very deep interest in the well-being, 
in the progress of the community. We are an integral 
part of it; why then should we be relegated to act as 
mere spectators ? 

Your husband says, madam, that if woman wants the 
right of vote, she should also be recruited to go to war, 
to be a soldier. In the first place, woman — it has so 
happened in my country — ^has offered herself in battal- 



132 THE GULF OF MISVNDEESTANDING 

ions to go to war to serve in the Department of the 
Red Cross, where, as in this war, she has met death 
with little less frequencj^ than soldiers. By the very act 
of going to sea, where death-dealing submarines navi- 
gate like fish, she runs the same risk as onr regular sol- 
diers. But I think, madam, that the triumphal entrance 
of woman in universal legislation, in the legislation of 
the allied countries, in that of the central empires and 
of the entire world, will tend to do aw^ay with wars in 
the future. In the world of the future, will not the 
conscience of mothers of all the countries that have seen 
the sacrifice of their husbands and sons in this sea of 
blood which is now stifling humanity, force them to in- 
tervene to prevent the committal of another such crime 
on the earth? The incorporation of woman into citizen 
life is a triumph of humanity that is going to be more 
profitably revolutionary than the invention of steam or 
electricity. 

Your husband says that the home is the place for 
woman; but what about the hundreds of thousands of 
women that modern industrial life has driven out of the 
home and sent to the factory? He thinks only of the 
women of the wealthy classes, those who are preoccupied 
exclusively by the three German Ks, and forgets alto- 
gether the vast majority of women in the world. In 
his eyes it is a very serious matter for a woman to be- 
come the manager of a bank, or a doctor, or a lawyer, 
but it is unimportant that she should work in a factory, 
making matches, preserves or ammunition. 

You must agree with me, madam, that it is right for 
woman to vote and to take part in decisions of a social 
nature which will concern her and her children. Gov- 
ernment of the people, by the people and for the people 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE 133 

does not mean government of man, by man and for man. 
Woman is a part of the people, and the time has arrived 
for her to claim her rights for the good of humanity. 

Regarding the advisability from a social standpoint 
for woman to take part in matters of State, it suffices to 
observe what has happened in the world since woman 
has partially succeeded in obtaining her electoral rights. 
In Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Denmark women 
have the same electoral rights as men, and you will agree 
with me that these countries are among the most ad- 
vanced in the world. In Sweden, England, Wales, Ire- 
land and Scotland woman has the right of municipal 
suffrage. In those of our states where woman has all 
the civil rights of man social legislation is, without a 
doubt, more equitable. It was by the vote of the women 
that a chief of police in California, who was protecting 
vice, was recalled. Soon after women secured the right 
of vote in Washington, the mayor and the chief of police 
of Seattle awakened public attention by their corrupt 
action in a certain matter, and in three days twenty- 
three thousand women asked for and obtained the recall 
of the mayor and had the chief of police put in jail. 
An eight-hour work day for women, equal pay for women 
and men workers, female teachers who visit homes to 
complete the education of children, and maternity pen- 
sions, are all the fruit, madam, of woman suffrage; but 
woman suffrage is not only beneficial to woman, but is 
also directly so for man, although it would be fully justi- 
fied if only for the service it has rendered in the cause 
of the redemption of our sex, which has very slowly 
shaped its own destiny in history. Let us not forget, 
madam, those days of ancient Indo-European civiliza- 
tion in which the father was the despot and the high- 



134 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

priest of the domestic cult, and could punish, kill or 
sell his wife. In this slow evolution, the world is only 
now awakening to the benefits of human society (in the 
most ample acceptation of the word) and is relinquish- 
ing the sway of a society composed of one sex. 

If the idea of woman suffrage seems strange and even 
extravagant to Latin America, it is because woman there 
has been ke^it in systematic ignorance. Strictly speak- 
ing, man has also been kept in systematic ignorance 
there. With the exception of a small group, certainly, 
in both cases. Many of our social problems of to-day 
will inevitably be problems for solution half a century 
later, or even more, for those countries. What is hap- 
pening with woman suffrage is happening with prohibi- 
tion. We have progressed more rapidly than those 
countries for historic reasons very easy to understand. 

Of course, your problem is very different from ours. 
To give the women of Latin America the right to vote 
would mean duplicating an uneducated electoral force. 
They have not arrived at the necessary stage of giving 
the vote to woman in general. I fear they have not yet 
reached the standard which should justify the extension 
of the vote to all men ; but just as it would be advisable 
to curtail the right of voting among the uneducated mas- 
culine elements — trying at the same time to educate 
them with a view to the restoration of this right — I think 
it would be a matter of justice and expediency to grant 
immediately the vote to every woman who possesses 
certain requisites of culture, for instance, a knowledge 
of the subjects taught in the high schools. 

Tell me, madam, you who know how the cultured 
woman in your country is beginning to work so success- 
fully in philanthropic lines, and has founded homes for 



WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE 135 

children, leagues to combat tuberculosis and benevolent 
societies of every kind, how much more could they do if 
the leaders were themselves legislators, promulgators of 
beneficial social laws and vetoers of pernicious social 
laws? Are the politics of your country clean in the 
highest degree? Are not anti-social laws passed there? 
Are not frauds committed? Is the milk that is sold in 
the streets pure ? Is food never adulterated ? Is white- 
slavery being combated as it should be? Is the drink 
habit being curbed? Are the factories where women 
work sanitary ? Are the wages of women equitable ? Is 
education being spread profusely in every city, village 
and farm? All these are political problems, madam, 
problems that need the direct intervention of woman 
the world over. 

Politics are dirt, your husband says, and we should 
keep our women clean. The fact is, woman should inter- 
vene in politics just for the purpose of cleansing them. 
It is the woman of one continent, my dear madam, who is 
speaking to the woman of another continent, and in spite 
of the fact that we are separated by oceans and moun- 
tain ranges, in spite of the fact that we do not know 
each other, we can at least agree that woman, all over the 
world, is endowed with a big heart, capable of doing as 
much or more good, of disseminating as much or more 
true lovingkiudness than men. 

I have very frequently read the criticisms of Latin 
American journalists with regard to the woman's suf- 
frage movement in my country. They try to discredit 
the new democratic tendencies of the world which would 
make of woman a citizen, saying — as does your husband 
— that this movement owes its being to unattractive 
spinsters or old women who for those reasons are dis- 



136 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

contented with their lot. Their idea of getting even so- 
cially is to obtain some authority in the community as a 
compensation for the neglect of which they have been 
innocent victims. 

It is perhaps the woman without special physical 
charm that has taken the most active part in these move- 
ments; and, generally speaking, it is she who has felt 
most deeply the neglect to which women, considered as 
a social element, have been subjected throughout history. 
If this is so, the fact can easily be explained without 
injury to our cause. But you may be sure that to-day 
the illustrated papers of the whole world might be filled 
with portraits representing the flower and cream of 
feminine beauty, all of them soldiers in the army of 
women who are fighting to obtain the rights of citizen- 
ship. 

It will be a new world, madam, a world in which 
woman will cooperate wholeheartedly in the noble work 
of conducting the destinies of each nation. Until now 
mankind has not taken advantage of women's help in 
the fight for progress, except in a minimum degree. 
The new world which is dawning will be one of all man- 
kind instead of, as now, a world of half mankind. 

Your Friend of the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER YII 

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 

NO great efforts of imagination were necessary on 
the part of Miss Jones to guess what would be 
the theme of the next letter. To speak of mar- 
riage and divorce in the United States after debating 
the matter of woman's suffrage was only what one 
might expect; she felt therefore no surprise when be- 
ginning to read the letter which follows below: 

Chicago, lU., , 1918. 

My dearest: 



I sometimes wonder why married couples in this coun- 
try get divorced, since it appears to me that they are 
practically divorced from the day of their wedding. 
In fact, the husband lives his life and the wife hers. 
The wife very often has her personal friends, very amia- 
ble men, who take her out riding, to dine at restaurants, 
and to the theater, while the husband does not even know 
these intimate friends of his own wife. He breakfasts 
at home and never returns until dinner time. I do not 
think the Yankee exists who ever took lunch at home. 
A possible exception might be made for the honeymoon 
period. 

Neverthless, living so separated, so divorced, they 

137 



138 TBE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

often find life together unbearable, and ask with terrific 
frequency for a more effective divorce, wbicli the law 
promptly grants them with a generosity worthy of a bet- 
ter cause. 

I told you in my previous letter that I have discovered 
here a new sex ; the American woman who is neither man 
nor woman. Well, there also exists in this country a 
new kind of child: the orphan whose parents are alive, 
the orphan whose parents have had recourse to the ultra ' 
liberal laws of this country to ask for their definite sep- 
aration and their liberty to marry again for the most 
trifling reasons. 

The newspapers of the United States publish comio 
items with extraordinary frequency, on every page. I 
do not know why. I understand why butter is spread 
on bread, but I see no necessity for spreading margarine 
on the butter. I mean that the actual news items they 
publish are much funnier than the jokes they make up. 
I think that the list of divorces and their causes, pub- 
lished every day by the newspapers, furnish the most 
entertaining reading imaginable. It is not uncommon 
for a woman to ask for a divorce because her husband 
snores at night, which does not permit her to dream at 
her ease. 

In our country everybody is familiar with the cards 
announcing marriages, births, christenings, or deaths; 
but here a card is also sent out when a lady announces 
to her relatives and friends that she is divorced. Not 
long ago I read one of these announcing a case much 
talked about on account of the social standing of the 
divorced woman. Printed on severe-looking parchment, 
with all the luxury proper to a lady of high degree the 
card read thus: 



MABBIAGE AND DIVOBCE 



139 



**By aiitliority of tlie decree of the Supreme Court of 
the State of New York, granted to me, dated June the 
tenth, one thousand nine hundred and sixteen, I have 
elected to resume my maiden name and will hereafter be 
known as Madame Evelyn Florence Partridge. 

"Evelyn Engalitchepf, 
Hotel Netherland, City of New York/' 

To the prince, her ex-husband, the divorced woman 
sent one of these cards, and he, reading it at the "Wal- 
dorf-Astoria Hotel, was seen to smile with an air of 
deepest satisfaction. Isn't this delightful? 

But the following is not so delightful : During the last 
fifty years there have been four million five hundred and 
eighty-six thousand seven hundred and thirty-two men 
and women separated by law in the United States, and 
these have left one million six hundred and eightj'-nine 
thousand six hundred and sixty-two orphans with their 
parents living. Although the tendency of North Ameri- 
can laws is to restrain divorce, it is increasing every day, 
not only on account of the increase in the population, 
because it increases three times as fast as the population. 
Just look at these figures, which are sadly eloquent : 



In 1867 there were 

In 1877 

In 1886 

In 1896 ** ** 

In 1906 '' ** 

In 1916 



in this country 


9,937 divorces 
14,800 *' 




25,535 *' 




42,937 '' 

72,062 '' 

124,000 '* 



The one hundred and twenty-four thousand divorces 
in 1916 left about one hundred and twenty-four thou- 
sand orphans with living parents. In Cook County, in 
which is the city of Chicago, and which has more or less 



140 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

the same population as tliat of our country, there are 
more than five hundred divorces each month, more than 
one for every hour of the day, in the long days of sum- 
mer. Just imagine the consternation there would be in 
Chile at the news of such a horror having occurred 
among us. 

The divorce laws of the different States are not the 
same. People often discuss the necessity for federal leg- 
islation to make the law uniform in this respect, but 
there are many States that wish to retain their full in- 
dependence to enact such laws regarding matrimonial 
relations as they see fit. While in South Carolina di- 
vorce does not exist — ^the only decent State in this re- 
spect — ^in others the laws are ultra liberal, and divorce, 
with the right to marry again, is granted to couples 
for the most absurd reasons. In West Virginia a wife 
can ask for a divorce if she learns that her husband, 
before marriage, was a ''notoriously licentious '^ person. 
If this law were to be put into effect in South America, 
practically every wife could get divorced. In many 
parts of this country the husband or wife can ask for 
and obtain a divorce without his or her life companion 
knowing anj^thing about it. The husband may come 
home and find among the cans just opened for his din- 
ner, together w^ith the grocer's bill, a divorce decree in 
which the judge has declared his wife single that very 
afternoon. 

One of our countrymen who has written very enthu- 
siastic books about this country had a certain experience 
in New York which he relates himself, perhaps without 
realizing the seriousness of what he is writing, since he 
is apt to take things lightly. In the boarding house 
where he was staying there was also a young lady, very 



MABBIAGE AND DIVORCE 141 

beautiful, an invalid, forced to remain forever seated in 
an invalid's chair. The lady was married, and her hus- 
band, an engineer, took only his breakfast and dinner 
with her. During the day she was wheeled about in 
the park by another gentleman. One day the ladj^ dis- 
appeared early in the morning. The gentleman who so 
assiduously took care of her went to see our compatriot, 
to whom he said : 

' ^ Do you know what has happened ? ' ' 

''What?" 

''Mrs. has been sent to Buffalo.'' 

"What do you mean?" 

"Her husband sent her there against her will. You 
know we love each other, but her husband — that imbecile 
— wants to put himself between us, and has sent her 
back to her father's house. The poor girl, an invalid, 
had not the strength to resist, and has sent me this let- 
ter." 

"But she is married," our countrj^man answered him. 

"And what has that got to do with it? So am I mar- 
ried. Both of us can obtain a divorce at the same time, ' ' 

Very American ! 

I spoke to you in my last letter of the case of a Miss 
Lusk. This young lady, a teacher of psychology, fell 
in love vvdtli a veterinary surgeon and manufacturer 
^ of patent medicines. This veterinarian was married, 
and consequently the teacher of psychology asked her 
lover to tell his wife that she — the wife — was unduly 
interposed between the love of both. The following is 
a copy of a letter that the lady sent to her lover's wife, 
a document which was recently published in all the 
newspapers of this city, and, I imagine, of the country: 



142 TEE GULF OF MI8UNDEB8TANDING 

**My dear Mrs. Eoberts: I have just come home from 
spending the evening with your husband. He has told 
me the full details of your Eastern trip, etc. We plan 
to be together to-morrow in the city. I am going to ask 
him then to decide finally between us. He has told me 
that it was I who had all his affections. I have begged 
him to go to you and tell you the situation frankly, for 
I felt you were a big enough woman to desire his happi- 



The end of this tragedy was that Miss Lusk murdered 
Mrs. Roberts, one consequence of which was that all her 
private correspondence was brought before the greedy 
eyes of the public. One thing at least may be said for 
the United States: Here a case may always be judged 
by the public without fear of error. They publish every- 
thing in their newspapers, even the most intimate secrets 
of a married couple. 

When a married woman finds that she loves another 
man — and this seems to happen frequently here — it is 
only necessary for her to speak. Woman must have her 
way. The following case of a professor of Chicago Uni- 
versity, which occurred recently, will serve to illustrate 

what I mean : Mr. occupies the chair of professor of 

preventive medicine in the university that bears the 
name of this city. His wife expresses to him her desire 
of getting a divorce, but the professor, who really loves 
her, does not wish to give his consent. She tells him 

frankly that she loves a Mr. , whom she purposes to 

marry when she is free. The professor is firm, and trusts 
that his wife will forget this illicit passion. He does 
everything possible to win the heart of his own wife. As 
she could get no satisfaction from her husband and as 
her lover was sent to France as a soldier, she asks for and 
obtains an appointment as nurse in a hospital in France. 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 143 

The husband succeeds in having this appointment an- 
nuled by giving the true reasons which induced his wife 
to abandon their home. As a result of this the wife 
could not go to France, but she left her husband, and 
nobody knows where she is. This incident was published 
with all the names in the papers. 

I could fill sheets and sheets with stories of divorces 
here. There is no respect for the sanctity of marriage. * 
I saw lately in The Daily Nexus an illustrated humorous 
dialogue which serves to corroborate my statements from 
a good-natured point of view : 

John — *'Why have you chosen the month of June to 
get married ? You know that June is the high summer 
here.'' 

Thomas — * ' The courts close in June and remain closed 
all the summer. We shall have to stay married for some 
time at all events. ' ' 

One of the most popular American poems is * * Evange- 
line," by Longfellow. I think you must have read it in 
Spanish. The story is simple and profoundly moving. 
In 1775 the English government roughly ejected a 
French colony in Arcadia, Nova Scotia, and Evangeline, 
the very day of her wedding, was separated from her 
husband in such a way that she lost all trace of him. 
The poem describes the wandering of the newly married 
girl in search of her husband, always faithful to her 
love, rejecting all new passion, all joy, until after many 
years, and already an old woman, she finds her husband 
on his death bed in a hospital where she is a nurse, and 
succumbs with him, a victim of her grief. This is the 
ecstasy of love, as we understand it. But Longfellow 
when writing this poem did not seek inspiration in his 



144 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

own country, since his poem is, to some extent, an imi- 
tation of "Hermann and Dorothea," by Goethe. And 
yet, the poet, thinking no doubt that it was unlikely that 
an American girl would act in such a way, had to make 
his heroine, Evangeline, a French girl by blood and 
temperament, the daughter of Bellefontaine, whose garb 
is that "brought in the olden times from France," whose 
lover is Gabriel Lajeunesse, and the village in which he 
lived is "such as the peasants of Normandy built in the 
reign of the Henries." 

Not even poets, in the dreams of their free fantasy, 
can disregard truth. 

As I am writing to you about marriages and divorces 
here, this morning I went to the Court of Domestic Rela- 
tions, and for three hours I listened to complaint cases 
of married people before a judge who hears exclusively 
cases of matrimonial disagreements, in which husbands 
complain of their wives and wives complain of their 
husbands. These cases are not brought forward with a 
view to divorce, but treat of transitory domestic diffi- 
culties in which one of the parties asks the authority of 
a judge to intervene and give a ruling. 

The judge I saw hears and judges from a high desk, 
in his shirt sleeves, without any vest or jacket, and with 
as little ceremony in his language as in his dress. Dur- 
ing all the time I was there no case was heard of a man 
complaining of his wife. All were cases of wives com- 
plaining of their husbands. And you ought to see with 
what meekneps the men came before the judge and how 
tyrannically the women spoke of their husbands: like 
a master to his slave. I cannot tell 3'ou all the incidents 
I witnessed, but one can serve as a sample of the reasons 
which bring these women before a ju.dge, complaining 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 145 

of the conduct of their husbands. One woman com- 
plains that her husband has given her only forty dol- 
lars out of seventy-five that he earns every two weeks. 
She speaks with the insolence of a creditor who not 
only is owed money, but who has been cheated. After 
the judge has heard her he questions the husband as he 
would question a criminal. He asks what he has done 
with the other thirty-five dollars that he has not given 
to his wife. The poor man presents a doctor's bill for 
twenty dollars which he had paid. 

**Did your husband owe this money?'' the judge asks 
the wife. 

*'Yes, your honor, and he paid it," the wife had to 
admit. 

*'But what have you done with the other fifteen dol- 
lars?" asks the judge of the husband. It later devel- 
oped that he had given his wife two dollars on a certain 
occasion and more later on. 

'*Is that so?" the judge asks the wife. 

"Yes, but that money was not out of his salary," she 
replies. 

Eventually it appeared that the wife had received 
practically all the money except about four dollars. And 
after everything was proved, the husband, still being 
afraid that the judge would sentence him, takes a little 
.piece of paper out of his pocket and passes it to him, 
saying: 

'*My wife very often leaves me papers like this at 
home." The judge reads in a loud voice: 

**I will not be here for dinner. The potatoes are in 
a bag in the pantry. Buy ten cents' worth of butter 
and fry them." And the piece of paper continues giv- 



146 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

ing directions for preparing the meal that she had in- 
tended for him that day. 

I will say for your comfort that the judge did not 
sentence the husband, and you ought to have seen the 
poor man's expression of gratitude. 

Oh ! it does not astonish me that the men get divorced 
here. What astonishes me is that they marry. On my 
part, I can say that if I had never known you, if the 
same fate had befallen me as befell Eobinson Crusoe, 
and if, on his famous desert island — our island of Juan 
Fernandez — I had met, instead of the native whom he 
called Friday, a modern American young lady, beautiful, 
ultra cultured, one of the very best, in a word, a true 
type of the feminine jeunesse doree of this country, if I 
did not have another companion on the island, another 
living being, and if I were condemned to live there for 
the rest of my life, I would play tennis with this girl, 
I would go out hunting with her — everything but make 
her my wife. I cannot conceive matrimonial happiness 
with a Yankee woman. They are as of another planet 
for me. The following from a newspaper of this city is 
more a philosophical reflection than a joke : 

Mrs. Gabb, reading a newspaper, says to her husband : 
*'I see here that a rich gentleman from the West has 
left five hundred thousand dollars to a woman who re- 
fused to marry him twenty years ago." Mr. Gabb an- 
swers: ''That's what I call gratitude!" 

If it were a duty of our government to look out for 
the private happiness of all its citizens, they ought to set 
aside a sum in the yearly budget to recompense Yankee 
girls for not marrying Chilean young men, who un- 
fortunately come to this country to study and are crazy 
enough to fall in love with American women. 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 147 

But, on mature reflection, one need not be astonished 
at the large number of divorces that are granted here 
every day. To meet a woman for the first time and 
propose marriage to her is pretty frequent. Marriages 
by telegraph are not unusual. A newspaper of Chicago 
makes a feature of getting men and women acquainted. 
The proprietor of this daily was once candidate for the 
presidency. I have already spoken to you about this 
paper, The Herald and Examiner, whose owner pos- 
sesses as many newspapers in this country as one would 
possess neckties in our country. 

The newspaper runs a free matrimonial agency. One 
of its sections that is published every day in two columns 
is called ''Lonely Hearts. '* A woman manages this 
love department of the newspaper. Any man or woman 
can write to the editor, asking for a companion. The 
letters vary but are more or less of the following tenor : 
*'I am twenty years old, tall, fair, and have blue eyes. 
I would like to get acquainted with a young man over 
thirty. I prefer one with dark eyes. He must be sober, 
like dancing and the theater. ' ' One man writes : ' * I am 
thirty years old, weigh one hundred and sixty-three 
pounds ; my height is five feet six inches. I work in the 
city from 9 A. M. to 5 P. M. I would like to become 
acquainted with a girl from 18 to 22 years old, pleas- 
ing, intelligent, with the idea of possibly marrying. ' ' 
• And there are thousands of letters of the same kind. 
Black, blue and dreamy eyes, blonde and black hair are 
offered. Of course, these letters are published, and the 
persons who fit the case in physique, age and tempera- 
ment, answer the editor, who makes the two ''lonely 
hearts" become acquainted. In combination with this 
section, the newspaper has a dance and picnic club 



148 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

where men and women can make eaeh other's acquaint- 
ance. Anybody who can present two references can 
belong to this club. A man writes asking to be made a 
member (I also wrote, from mere curiosity) and receives 
a letter from the chaperon saying: ''You must know 
that thousands in Chicago are interested in our club. 
... In your own vicinity, perhaps in your own street, 
alongside your house, there are persons who are very 
desirous of becoming acquainted with a person just like 
you. . . ." 

Just imagine this free matrimonial agency. Hearts at 
public auction, in the market of Chicago, just like bacon, 
carpets and pajamas. It's no wonder that divorce is the 
immediate result. And this same daily publishes car- 
toons — about which I have written to you before — de- 
scribing the tortures of married life — for the husband, 
you understand. 

In New York a paper is published called The Matri- 
monial News, whose sub-title is ''Cupid's Advertiser." 
The following is one of its editorials: "This society is 
organized and incorporated by philanthropic people, 
having broad and humanitarian ideals, for the purpose 
of obviating the bad social and economic conditions that 
are an obstacle to matrimony in New York and the 
United States in general. ... No matter how fastidious 
you may be, we feel confident that sooner or later 
amongst the many thousands of members you will be 
able to find the ideal companion you are seeking. ' ' This 
paper publishes more than a hundred advertisements 
all sent by Cupid. Here is a sample: 

"Here is just the sweet little miss you have been 
looking for. Her age is 20 summers; weight 140 lbs.; 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 149 

height, 5 ft. 4 ins. ; dark hair, blue eyes, rosy complexion ; 
mild disposition; American; income of nine thousand 
dollars a year; college education; enjoys good health; 
neat and tidy appearance ; plaj^ s the piano and sings ; 
has property worth $130,000 ; never married and no one 
dependent upon her. No objection to a poor man if 
honorable and a good worker. "Would like to marry an 
honorable farmer and live in the country. Will marry 
at an early date. Write and get acquainted before it is 
too late." 

Many of the men and women who advertise even pub- 
lish their photographs. If what some of the young 
ladies say in their ''ads" is true, I ought to divorce my- 
self from you and ask their hand in marriage. 

In this country the sanctity of marriage and of the 
family is not understood. People here would not under- 
stand our conception of home. We ought to thank God 
that we were not born here. 

I have read a novel by Ernest Poole which studies 
family life in this country. This novel seems to me 
sufficiently authorized and representative, since the 
School of Journalism of Columbia University has given 
it the first prize, in accordance with the donation made 
by Joseph Pulitzer, by declaring it the novel that pic- 
tures best ''American life." 

It is the story of a New York widower of a well-to-do 
family, with three daughters, each living a different 
life. One of these daughters is Laura, who, like every 
American woman, goes out alone and comes home late 
at night after having gone to balls and theaters with 
persons whom her father does not even know. 

The following is a scene between father and daughter: 

She — "Do you remember Harold Sloane?" 
ffe— "No." 



150 THE GULF OF MI8UNDEBSTANDING 

She — **I want you to know him. I am going to 
marry him." 

This is the way in which the father found out that 
his daughter was going to be married. A few months 
pass. One day Laura visits her father's house and has 
the following conversation with her sister, Deborah: 

Laura — *'This time it's divorce. I've stood it long 

enough." 

Deborah — '*You mean you don't care for your hus- 
band ? You want a divorce — but how do you think you 
are going to get it? The laws are rather strict in this 
state. One ground only is acceptable, and even if your 
husband has been unfaithful, have you any proofs?" 

Laura — ' ' No, I haven 't — but I don 't need any proofs. 
He wants it as badly as I do." 

Deborah — "Your husband is to bring suit against you? 
For God's sake, Laura, what do you mean?" 

Laura — ' ' Mean ? I mean that he has proofs ! He has 
used a detective — the mean little cur — and he's treating 
me like the dirt under his feet ! Just as though it were 
one thing for a man and quite another for a woman! 
He even had the nerve to be mad, to get on a high horse, 
to call me names ! Turn me — turn me out on the street ! ' ' 

Deborah — "Stop, this minute! You say that you've 
been doing — what he has ? ' ' 

Laura — ' ' Why shoudn 't I ? What do you know about 
it? Are you going to turn against me, too?" 

Deborah — "Perhaps I am. Speak clearly. Explain 
yourself. ' ' 

Laura — "Explain — to you? How can I? You don't 
understand — you know nothing about it — all you know 
about is books. You're simply a nun when it comes to 
this. I see it now — I didn't before — I thought you a 
modern woman — ^with your mind open to new ideas. 
, . . You're afraid." 

Deborah — "Yes, I'm afraid." 



MABBIAGE AND DIVORCE 151 

Laura — '* And, being afraid, you can't be fair. You're 
like nearly all American women — married or single, 
young or old — you're all of you scared to death about 
sex — just as your Puritan mothers were ! . . . But I 'm 
not afraid and I 'm living my life ! And let me tell you 
I 'm not alone ! There are hundreds and thousands doing 
the same — right here in New York City to-night. It's 
been so abroad for years and years — in Rome and Berlin, 
in Paris and London — and now, thank God, it has come 
over here ! If our husbands can do it, why can 't we ? " 



Deborah— ''^Yho's the man? That Italian?" 
LaurOr-^'Yes.'' 
Del) or ah— "Where is he?" 
Laura — ''Right here in New York." 
Deborah — ''Does he mean to stand by you?" 
Laura — "Of course he does." 
Deborah — "Will he marry you, Laura?" 
Laura — "Yes, he will — the minute I'm free from my 
beast of a husband!" 



And that 's just what happened. Laura got a divorce 
from her first husband and married the Italian. 

This is the philosophy of marriage in the United 
States. This is a trait of the American family's in- 
feriority. In the whole scale of life the offspring de- 
pend longer and longer on the parents, in proportion 
as the importance, complexity and refinement of the 
species increases. In simple vegetal life plants have 
nothing to do with the plants that gave them life. The 
wind draws out billions of seeds from the pine-trees and 
the new pine-grove that is born in the rugged forest 
knows nothing of its parents in a far-away forest The 
salmon comes out of the sea, swims up the river, lays 



152 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

its eggs, and thereafter knows and cares nothing about 
the new myriad to which it has given life. The spar- 
row takes better care of its eggs and its little ones in 
the nest, but it leaves them alone as soon as they know 
how to fly. It is a privilege of man to keep his children 
for as long a time as possible, and it is his prerogative 
to be at their side so as to insure their future happiness 
till death. The fact of a daughter making herself inde- 
pendent of her family at fifteen years of age and acting 
on her own account, without the advice and permission 
of her parents, is a step backwards, not a mark of prog- 
ress in the record of human life. 

It is this contagion that I am afraid of if we insist in 
admiring and imitating this country. Fortunately, our 
women seem to be immune against such a plague. 
Heaven grant that neither years nor centuries will be 
able to weaken the power of their resistance. 



Your husband who adores you 



No sooner had she read this letter than Miss Jones 
took up her pen to answer it. It might well be supposed 
that she felt hurt in her womanly dignity ; but she was 
now so accustomed to the contemptuous observations 
made in these letters that she was able to write the reply 
quite calmly in these words: 

Madam : 

Do not think for a moment that I intend to comment 
upon this letter from your husband moved by the indig- 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 153 

nation which you probably think its perusal has caused 
me as an American woman. No. I am understanding 
better and better your husband's temperament and his 
one-sided criterion in judging of our life. 

In your country there are no laws to make divorce 
easy, except in a very few cases, in which the divorced 
couples must not marry again. This is a general rule 
in Latin America with a few exceptions, as in Uruguay. 
Your husband, madam, has taken Cook County, where 
the city of Chicago is, to compare it with your country, 
since they both have approximately the same population, 
and invites you to imagine the consternation that would 
be caused in Chile by the publication of the news that 
there had been in one year one hundred and twenty-four 
thousand divorces. I also believe that this would cause 
great consternation in Chile, since of the three million 
and a half persons who comprise the population of your 
country, according to the last census, only eight hundred 
and seventy-one thousand are married. If there were 
as many divorces there as in Cook County, in four years 
everybody would be divorced, those who got married 
during those four years included. 

If you begin to ask yourself why there are so few mar- 
ried people in Chile, you will arrive at the conclusion, 
not that the people live in a state of sexual abstinence, 
but that relations between the sexes are frequent among 
the unmarried in your country, as in all Latin America. 

I know very well that in your country, as in almost 
all Latin America, the uncultured classes live generally 
in a sort of concubinage, at times permanent, but very 
often transitory. If an account were to be made of the 
different "wives" that the men of Latin America have 
had — that is, of voluntary divorces, without the inter- 



154 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

vention of tlie law, without punisliment or compensation 
on the part of the hnsband for the abandoned woman — 
we should find relatively more divorces in your country 
than in ours. 

The fundamental error, madam, of your husband is 
that he compares the high, cultured classes of your 
country with the figures of our statistics, which naturally 
include our whole population. A Latin American when 
speaking of his country only thinks of those of his own 
social class, without regarding the lower classes. The 
following are figures taken from statistics, showing the 
percentage of the population that is illegitimate in some 
Latin American countries: In Uruguay, twenty-seven 
per cent, of the population is of illegitimate birth; in 
Chile, thirty-seven per cent.; in Venezuela and Colom- 
bia, fifty-eight per cent. ; in Ecuador, seventy-five per 
cent. ; and in Paraguay, ninety per cent. In Bolivia or 
Peru conditions are similar, if not worse. 

In order that you may realize the gravity of this 
problem in your country, where it is analogous to that 
of the other Latin American countries, I will add that in 
spite of the fact that the mortality of legitimate children 
is thirty-one per cent, in Chile, the mortality of illegiti- 
mate children between birth and the age of seven years 
is sixty-three per cent. 

I am not quoting these figures in order to taunt Latin 
America, since I know very well that this condition is a 
consequence of several causes which will gradually be 
rooted out ; but I write in reply to that exclamation of 
surprise of the Latin American who so often sneers at 
us because of our divorce record, and who declares that 
neither home nor family exists here, and that we do not 
respect the sanctity of marriage. Abandonment, sub- 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 155 

mission, and ignorance of women is the normal condition 
of the humble classes in those countries; and, there 
being practically no marriages, a large part of the popu- 
lation lives in a condition of free love, and has not felt 
the necessity of divorce. Wait till the women of Latin 
America wake up, become educated, individualized, and 
are born as social units; and I assure you they will 
claim the right to separate lawfully from the men who 
for one reason or another humiliate them or treat them 
like a servant instead of as an equal. 

Do you imagine for a moment, madam, that there are 
not among us millions and millions of happy homes? 
Tell me, is not the mere fact that we have so many facili- 
ties to get a divorce, that the maltreated and deceived 
wife has an open door for legal separation with alimony 
from the man who was her husband, a guarantee that 
the immense majority of married people do live happily? 
If in your country they were to print the news of all 
the poor people who separate each day, with the same 
lack of ceremony with which they became united, and if 
they were to publish the causes of disagreements, would 
not your husband also find there a fountain of humor 
typical of daily life? Real life is sometimes bitterly 
grotesque. Our lists of divorces, made in accordance 
with the law and considered — unduly, in my opinion — 
news of public interest, are only the counterpart of those 
separations of people not married by law and not pub- 
lished in the Spanish American countries. 

I must repeat, madam, by way of this problem of di- 
vorce, something that I told you in my notes to the 
previous letter of your husband. In our country the 
social unit is the individual man or woman, and in your 
country the social unit is the family. Considering the 



156 THE GULF OF ^IISUNDEBSTANDING 

personality of the individual among ns, slie not only 
expects, but in a certain manner demands happiness in 
marriage. "Woman does not sacrifice herself so volun- 
tarily for the benefit of marriage although she may do 
it, and frequently does, for the benefit of her children. 
If a woman is ill treated here she will not put up with it, 
while in Latin countries she bears more easily the con- 
tempt of her husband, and, yielding, humbles herself. 
Nearly all our divorces are asked for by the wife, who 
claims her right to happiness as her part of life. 

Marriage, madam, is a contract, a sacred contract, 
without doubt, in which a man and a woman have prom- 
ised to unite their lives to form a common home before 
God and man. This contract being the most serious one 
in life, one should think well before making it, so as to 
run the least danger possible of making a mistake. But 
we are human; we can make a mistake in spite of all. 
This contract is often made at an early age, impelled by 
an almost overwhelming passion. If we make a mistake, 
if we are unfortunate in our marriage, why should we 
be condemned to live a miserable life, a life of tortures ? 
You probably have seen around you thousands of mar- 
ried couples very unhappy. Why should those men and 
women suffer everlasting torture through life? 

From the very beginning men understood that they 
had to guard against misfortune in marriage ; but as they 
thought only of their own happiness, they made laws 
that to-day we consider fit only for savages. In the 
early days of Rome, as in the beginning of almost all 
society, the wife was considered as the property of the 
husband, who bought or acquired her in some other man- 
ner. He then had the right of life or death over her; 
and later a law was established which enacted that the 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 157 

husband could, instead of killing her, divorce himself 
when he became tired of her company. In ancient 
Eome laws were passed which permitted the husband to 
divorce his wife if the latter went out without a veil or 
spoke to a woman of inferior rank in the street. 

In the evolution, through the centuries, of laws regard- 
ing divorce we always feel the weight of tradition and of 
ecclesiastical and dogmatic influence. In this respect 
to-day complete anarchy reigns in the entire world 
among the most civilized nations, and in this chaos are 
degrees of confused legislation going from absolute pro- 
hibition of divorce to divorce granted by the simple mu- 
tual desire of both parties, without the law entering 
and studying the reasons, as in Norway. You admit 
separation in South America, but in such exiDressive and 
determined conditions that almost make it impossible, 
since you absolutely debar the divorced pair from mar- 
rying again. You, as I gather from your husband's 
letters, are very happy in your home; but if a woman 
has been unfortunate enough to marry a libertine or a 
drunkard, believing him to be an honorable man, v/hy 
should she not get a divorce? And whj^ should she 
refuse to be happy later on with a good man whom she 
loves and who understands her? This seems strange in 
your country; it is even more so in other parts, where 
they think that a widow or widower cannot marry again 
without making themselves guilty of posthumous bigamy. 
For those who think in that way, our President Wilson 
and our ex-President Roosevelt would be posthumous 
bigamists. 

The world is traveling, madam, along a road of en- 
deavor to contrive more and more ways of making more 
and more individuals happy. France is a very Latin 



158 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

country, even more so than Latin America, and it per- 
mits divorce with the right on the part of the divorced 
pair to marry again. Spanish America will, sooner or 
later, have to follow the same course as these countries 
that do not believe that marriage has to be a rigorous 
lottery, without appeal, in which a number drawn must 
either win a prize or lose once and for all. 

The last word has not been yet spoken in the world 
as regards definite laws for divorce. My country par- 
ticularly in this respect is a laboratory for social ex- 
perimentation. I know that we are far, very far, from 
having solved the problem. But efforts of every char- 
acter are being made to solve it. Our Courts of Do- 
mestic Relations are an attempt of the State to intervene 
in the home, by the request of one of the parties, with 
the purpose of insuring as far as possible happiness in 
marriage. Some States, like Minnesota, have under- 
taken to teach the men how to proceed in order to guar- 
antee the maximum of happiness in the home. The State 
Board of Health publishes pamphlets and issues propa- 
ganda with the purpose of avoiding hasty marriages, 
entered into blindly; it cautions the married couple 
against the errors they may commit when marrying if 
they do not know thoroughly well the character of their 
future life companion; and then it teaches how to live 
the life of married people. New experiments and ideas 
are being proposed and being brought into use con- 
stantly. I myself do not know what to anticipate as 
regards the future of this problem ; but I do know that 
our ideal is to have the most complete happiness reign 
within the home, both for the wife and the husband. 
Our aspiration is to be happy, in the enjojonent of free- 



MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE 159 

dom, with purity and honor, not as the canary in the 
cage, but as the dove under the eaves. 

In the novel by Ernest Poole, to which your husband 
refers, the author describes three different women as 
types of American womanhood. Laura is one, Deborah 
is another, and Judith is the third. Why does your 
husband choose Laura as the type of our womanhood? 
Why not Judith, who condemns Laura blindly, or De- 
borah, of such a different temperament? The case pre- 
sented by Laura is generally one of the big cities, often, 
as here, of a woman who has traveled through Europe 
and has been contaminated by certain currents of opinion 
in the great cities of Rome, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. 
And what of Judith, the self-denying mother? And 
Deborah, the woman of a collective spirit, the mother of 
thousands of children, the social reformer? 

Judith, when she knew the whole truth, was filled 
with indignation, and said to her father that she could 
not understand how he could tolerate the return of 
Laura dishonored to his roof, where she, Judith, now a 
widow, lived with her children, whom Laura would con- 
taminate by her bad example. Judith is the opposite 
type to Laura, unchangeable in her puritanism. And 
Deborah, the broad-minded woman, full of lovingkind- 
ness, sublime in her aspirations, indulgent to the weak- 
ness of others, always more disposed to relieve the pain 
than to reprove the transgression, a devoted wife and 
mother, and with a soul so big that her goodness fills the 
home and flows over beyond its limits ; this is the woman 
prototype of my country ; this is the new woman who is 
the symbol of feminism in my motherland. 

But even taking this one case — that of Laura — it is a 
fact that a new philosophy is making its way in my 



160 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

country. Purity for both sexes. Fidelity in both sexes. 
I believe that the present complexity of our sexual life 
aims at this. 

And, of course, it is true that the women do not de- 
pend so much in my country, as in Latin America, on 
the opinion of their parents to choose their life com- 
panions. Woman is, without doubt, more independent 
here. She thinks more for herself of the problems 
that are going to affect her directly. Cases do not 
occur here of a woman who loves a man and who is 
forced by her parents (who have no fault to find with 
the man she loves) to marry another whom she does 
not love, or simply prevent her from marrjdng the man 
she loves. "Woman, among us, is more master of her- 
self. 

Woman and man are adults before the law in my 
country earlier than in yours. And this is not a proof 
of inferiority, as your husband believes, in the com- 
parison that he makes with vegetal and animal life; 
it is a proof simply that the schools and life in my 
country prepare the child more rapidly for his own in- 
dividual action. In every line of action you will al- 
ways see young men here at the head of grave respon- 
sibilities. The people live faster here. The mind 
awakens earlier ; individualities are respected even in in- 
fancy. The son does not necessarily believe in the same 
religion nor must he have the same political creed as 
the father. Take, for example, a High School in the 
United States and a College or High School in your 
country ; here the student can select the studies that he 
likes to complete his course ; he has a service a la carte 
for his tastes and inclinations ; in your country he is sub- 
mitted to a determined discipline, to a fixed program, 



MABBIAGE AND DIVORCE 161 

to certain exact branches, with general rules for all, 
whether they meet or not the tendencies, the tempera- 
ment, of each child. 

Although it is true that the interference of parents 
can contribute very often to the happiness of their 
children, it is no less true that it may often be the 
cause of misfortune. The son does not necessarily have 
to be a faithful reproduction of the father; nature en- 
dows him with his own idiosyncrasy. There is variety 
in the species, and the more so when the species is 
more perfect. There never can be such marked differ- 
ences between two moles or two sparrows as between 
two men. 

The only way the world can advance, madam, is to 
respect the individualities of children. To mold each 
child to the temperament, tendency, and philosophy of 
the father is to perpetuate the immobility of the human 
race. The son will be the same as the father, the 
grandfather, and the great-grandfather, and his chil- 
dren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be 
the same as he. 

For the sake of this respect for the individuality 
of the child, madam, we, with not less affection for 
our children, submit to their criterion their own prob- 
lems as soon as they are capable of making their own 
resolutions. 

Before concluding I wish, madam, to insist emphatic- 
ally that I believe that the woman of your country, 
taking her as a whole, high class and low class, is 
exceptionally chaste, and I know very well that the 
figures of illegitimate births that the statistics give re- 
flect upon only a special philosophy of the lower classes, 



162 THE GULF OF MISUNDEBSTANDING 

tliat do not give to the marriage act itself, civil or 
religious, the importance that it has in your mind and 
my^mind. 

With kind regards, 

A Friend of the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER VIII 

REUGION 

THIS time three weeks passed without the Chicago 
correspondent writing to his wife. Miss Jones 
supposed that the Chilean was now ready to 
return home, and that this correspondence was there- 
fore finished, when, one morning, the following letter 
took her by surprise : 

Chicago, 111., ..........1918. 

My dearest : 



Some one has said that there are one hundred re- 
ligions in this country, and only one sauce, but, judging 
from what I have seen, there are one hundred kinds 
of sauce and two hundred religions, amongst which, 
the sauces and the religions, it is difficult to choose the 
most despicable. 

Just as mushrooms in our country shoot up over- 
night from the ground, so religions sprout up here. 
It is a common thing for each member of a family of 
five to profess a different religion. The churches are 
■organized like business houses to recruit their clients. 
These Yankees are systematizing heaven, and as in the 
department stores, there are bargain sales from time 
to time, like one recently offered by Billy Sunday in 
Chicago, sales in which the customer may acquire Jesus 
Christ at a bargain price, below cost. 

163 



164 TEE GVLF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

When I arrived in Chicago the coming of Billy Sun- 
day to this city was being advertised. I must tell you, 
since you could not possibly know it, that Billy Sunday 
is a religious orator. He formerly was a baseball player, 
but as he saw that there was more money in religion 
he devoted himself to it. He made no mistake, since 
he has already earned half a million dollars in his new 
profession, to which he has adapted the gestiires of 
his first athletic profession. 

Of course, as soon as Billy Sunday arrived in Chi- 
cago, I hastened to hear this prodigy of whom the news- 
papers had been for months publishing columns and 
columns of advance notices. 

There is not a theater in Chicago, or in the world, 
which can hold the crowd that Billy Sunday attracts; 
consequently, he has to have a special colosseum built, 
which he calls a tabernacle. On the banks of the calm 
waters of Lake IMichigan, like John the Baptist on the 
banks of the Jordan, this apostle of the twentieth cen- 
tury sets up his amphitheater. 

Yvlien I arrived, the immense colosseum was full of 
women and men, young and old, but the greater part 
women. How does an orator succeed in bringing to- 
gether fifteen thousand persons twice a day, and three 
times on Sundays, for ten weeks? Because this is 
what Billy Sunday has done. I think that it is mainly 
curiosity, the same that brought me there : the curiosity 
to see the stupendous pantomimes of this man. If 
it is advertised here that a man will eat a live rattle- 
snake, the masses are always ready to go and see it 
done. And so behold me on my way to see the king 
of grotesque pantomime. 

"When I took my seat, Billy Sunday had not yet com- 



RELIGION 165 

menced to speak; his secretary was speaking. This 
gentleman was showing the crowd how to cough with- 
out making a noise; he was telling the public that 
nobody should leave immediately at the end of the 
ceremony, during the conversion, and finally he said 
that everybody ought to contribute towards the ex- 
penses of this great religious campaign. Then came 
the collection, because this ceremony is payable in ad- 
vance: hundreds of plates are suddenly passed around 
the whole tabernacle ; in each row a plate is passed from 
person to person as each one puts in his obolus. The 
plates emerge in the aisles of the tabernacle, and thence, 
in a mighty stream, the contributions flow into the 
financial department, where the total is figured. 

While the secretary speaks, Billy Sunday is seated on 
the platform rubbing his neck. I have read that this 
great orator has a professional massagist for his throat, 
but, evidently, he has to supplement the work of the 
doctor who takes care of his oratory muscles. 

Small, agile, of a penetrating look, he has not, how- 
ever, a physiognomy revealing any very remarkable 
ability. Seen in the street, without knowing who he 
is, he could be taken for a hair-dresser, an umbrella 
seller, or an insurance agent. Besides, his manners, 
while seated before the public, are coarse. Between 
hiccoughs, he scratches his feet, chews paper, and rest- 
lessly scrutinizes the audience. In his movements he 
resembles a monkey in a zoological garden. I regarded 
him with amazement and understood that only a public 
like the Yankee would tolerate such a bounder as a 
teacher of ethics. In our country lynching would break 
out spontaneously to punish the audacious impertinence ; 
but I ceased to wonder when I remembered that I was 



166 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

in the United States, the country of grotesque vaude- 
villes. 

In his language he is irreverent. He speaks of Jesus 
Christ with such familiarity, that it seems as if they had 
been college chums. He treats biblical characters as 
if he had loaned them all money and they had not 
yet paid him back. He calls Joseph Joe, he calls 
Job Jake. As for him, he compares himself with the 
greatest personages of history with an arrogance truly 
Yankee. He says, for example: ''Napoleon used to 
sleep four hours, I sleep less than he. ' ' He puts himself 
on a level with Lincoln and Washington. 

But his language is nothing, his eloquence and his 
arrogance are nothing when compared with his panto- 
mimes. For this he has not and never will have an 
equal in the world. He jumps, shouts, shrieks, twists 
and spits. A great stunt of a tenor is to bring out 
a beautiful high C; a great stunt of Billy Sunday is 
to take off his jacket in the middle of his excitement 
and throw it at the audience, or to take a chair and 
break it in pieces on the platform. This seems un- 
believable, gross exaggeration, but by this time you 
probably have accustomed yourself to believe that noth- 
ing is impossible when treating of this country. 

And then comes the imposing final. The call for 
people to be converted. Then Billy Sunday speaks in 
the voice of an afflicted woman, he cries like a Magdalen, 
and the chorus of thousands of women invites the mul- 
titude to approach and shake the hand of the Savior, 
to approach and commune with Jesus Christ. A pro- 
cession begins. That moment is truly imposing, be- 
cause men and women, really possessed of holy faith, 
approach with frightened eyes, some almost lifeless, 



RELIGION 167 

others in hysteria. It is a moment of collective hyp- 
notism. Billy Sunday is a past master in understand- 
ing the psychology of the masses. You know that at 
the circus, when a man of the troupe stands at the 
entrance to announce the wonders inside, he selects the 
jaoment of the climax of his eloquence to say: "Now 
en ter, but do not rush, there 's room for all, do not 
rush,^' and a crowd composed of the very employees of 
the company is behind the public pushing the people 
to make way. The public does not know that they are 
employees of the company, but believes them to be part 
of the crowd that is rushing to get in, and it is dragged 
along. The people buy their tickets and go in. The 
public is hypnotized. Everybody goes in. In the same 
way Billy Sunday, with hundreds of drilled agents, 
speeds up conversion. 

Well, this extraordinary man has converted fifty 
thousand persons in Chicago in his campaign. He has 
saved fifty thousand souls. One of his admirers says 
that the salvation of these fifty thousand souls has 
cost Chicago two hundred thousand dollars. As every- 
thing here is reduced to numbers, it has been figured 
that the salvation of each soul has cost four dollars, 
and as this means eternal happiness for the other life, 
it is impossible to compute what infinitesimal fraction 
of a cent each century of happiness for each saved 
person costs. 

• I have spoken to you so much in detail of Billy Sun- 
day because he is the most popular religious personage 
in the United States, he is more popular than the kaiser 
in Germany or the devil in hell. He is the supreme 
clown of the world. But don't think he is the only 
one. 



168 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

There is another religious sect here which is enjoy- 
ing an extraordinary vogue and which is advancing 
with unbelievable rapidity. It is called Christian 
Science. It owns in Boston one of the most imposing 
churches in the country and publishes there a daily 
newspaper which has gained great renown in the whole 
republic. The headstone of this church is the belief 
that man can and should cure his own ailments with-, 
out the aid of doctors or medicines, that is to say^ by 
the exercise of his own will. 

The Mormons, whose religion permits men to have 
several wives, still exist. Although not long ago 
polygamy was prohibited by law, Morm.onism still flour- 
ishes and it has thousands of missionaries and j^riests 
spreading their faith. I have spoken here with men 
and women who are Morm.ons and who defend their 
doctrines most vigorously. The death was announced 
not long ago of Joseph Fielding Smith, President of 
the Mormon Churchy or, as they call it: the Church of 
Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. They have four 
hundred thousand adepts. In the Eeverend Mr. Smith, 
as head of the church, was invested the authority of his 
uncle, Joseph Smith, the original Mormon prophet. 
This prophet had five wives and forty-three children. 
Only since 1890 is polygamy illegal all over the United 
States; but the prophet Smith insisted to the last that 
he could not abandon his numerous sons and wives. 

It would be a hopeless task to try to make here even 
the most superficial mention of the one hundred and 
eighty-six denominations that flourish in this country, 
according to statistics. There are religions for all tastes, 
and if a person does not agree with any of them, he 
just founds a new one. These people believe that re- 



BELIGION 169 

li^ons are like eggs, to be served in any way, soft boiled, 
fried, scrambled, as an omelet or in cocktails, and to be 
mixed with anything, say, with tomatoes, asparagus or 
red pepper, according to the taste and fancy of the 
consumer. 

Of course, our religion, Catholicism is ever gaining 
more and more new adepts here and counts to-day 
more than seventeen million souls. As a matter of 
fact it is the denomination that has the largest number 
of adepts in the United States. Catholics here own 
fifteen thousand four hundred and twenty-seven 
churches. The second most numerous denomination is 
that of the Methodists, with seven million three hundred 
and twenty-eight thousand members. I believe that the 
day is still far off when Catholicism will be the only re- 
ligion professed in this country. Moreover, I think it 
really is a serious matter that these dissenting religions 
are carrying on an immense work of propaganda in our 
countries, and that in our own Chile they have founded 
schools and churches that threaten our national faith. 
They are collecting here more and more money to ex- 
tend their creeds to our countries. What have they 
got to do with our beliefs ? This propaganda makes for 
disorder and the annihilation of our national soul, it 
is an offense against the conscience of our countries. 

A nation with one hundred and forty Christian re- 
ligions (v/ithout counting the non-Christian religions 
which also abound) cannot have any unity of sentiment, 
and threatens us with this Babel of souls. Who is going 
to free us from the danger of such an invasion by these 
exiles of God? The Yankee peril for our Latin coun- 
tries is not only military, not only political and not 
only commercial ; it is also religious. Pray to God, my 



170 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

wife, with all tlie saintly faith of a Christian woman, 
that our country be saved from the modern barbarian? 
of the North. 



Your husband who adores you. 



Miss Jones was a Christian woman who revered the 
liberty of conscience. The Chicago correspondent's nar- 
row-mindedness surprised her not at all; she knew 
that there were fanatical Roman Catholics in Latin 
America, who looked upon all Protestants as heretics, 
and she had found there great numbers of skeptics who 
scouted the belief in any religion; but she also recog- 
nized that a spirit of tolerance was very hard to find. 
Certain of her ground, she replied to this letter thus: 

Madam : 

In the problem of religion, the capital difference 
between your country, between Latin America in gen- 
eral, and the United States, is that over there there 
is a state religion and in my country there is no state 
religion ; over there there is a religion that can be called 
the only one, and in my country there are many re- 
ligions. Roman Catholicism is the religion of Latin 
America; Roman Catholicism is also one of the re- 
ligions of my country, but many Americans profess 
other denominations of the Church of Christ, and even 
other religions not of the Church of Christ. 

Our country having been founded by men who fled 
from the religious persecutions of old Europe, it was 
only logical that one of the headstones of our national 



RELIGION 171 

organization should be absolute liberty of conscience. 
On the other hand, Latin America was conquered by an 
intolerant Spain, not by persecuted men, but by per- 
secutors who brought the Inquisition to the New World. 
This is the historical cause of this capital divergence. 

The state could not, among us, take over the right 
of prescribing a determined religion to its citizens; it 
could not, with the funds of the nation, support the 
apostles of a single religion. This will never happen in 
my country. There is a modern tendency to have the 
state take over many services of public utility, such 
as railroads, steamships, telephones and telegraphs; but 
it will never come to pass that the state will take over 
religion, as happens in your countries where the priests 
are paid out of the national budget. 

Madam, religion is a matter of the individual con- 
science of every person. To impose a religion on a 
person is like forcing a mask on his face; that person 
does not profess that religion if he does not feel it, 
if he does not believe in it, if he does not understand 
it or if he does not accept it with all sincerity. In fact, 
in our country there is absolute liberty of conscience; 
in Latin America, sometimes openly, but often secretly, 
there exists the imposition of a determined belief. With 
the taxes and contributions that a Protestant pays, a 
church that he does not believe in is supported. I 
mention this point, madam, because it marks a capital 
difference in the sincerity and intensity of religious sen- 
timent. I believe that as a consequence of this, in part, 
in my country religious sentiment is more profound, 
more sincere than in Latin America. Religion among 
"US has a more decisive influence on our actions. Even 
treating of Roman Catholics, I submit that they are 



172 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

more truly sincere and more deeply convinced in the 
United States than in Latin America. 

The fact that in my country different ways of inter- 
preting the Bible have originated different denomina- 
tions of the Church of Christ, I believe has been beneficial 
to religion itself, even though ultra-radical, unilateral 
and in some cases, if you like, dishonest sects have been 
formed under the protecting shade of this liberty of 
interpretations. I am not going to speak to you of 
individuals in these notes, madam; so I am not going 
to answer your husband's long dissertation about the 
Rev. William Sunday. But I must say that it would 
be wise to weigh very carefully what is said against 
a man who has had exceptional success in his career 
or who attacks evils and the interests allied with evils, 
such as alcoholism and vice, in such an aggressive way 
as that of Mr. Sunday. Such a man must have enemies. 
In your mind look back at history and you will see how 
the fighters of all periods have been persecuted and 
reviled. If Christ came back once more into the world, 
you may be sure that He would be crucified once again. 
The man whom I do not envy is he who never made any 
enemies, he whose death is mourned by all, even by the 
undertaker who sells his coffin. Allow me at least to 
recall one fact with regard to Mr. Sunday: when he 
entered the church, he left a good, remunerative position 
to accept one as secretary to a religious organization 
which paid him only seventy-five dollars a month. 

But as I have told you, I do not want to discuss 
persons nor even religions. You profess the Eoman 
Catholic religion and I revere with the most profound 
respect your beliefs. But do not believe, madam, that 
this diversity of religious creeds, destroys national unity 



RELIGION 173 

among its, as your husband fears it does, because it is 
in the mind of everybody here to respect and tolerate 
the creeds of others. On the other hand, the fact that 
we are not confined to the creed of one church alone has 
promoted and is still promoting a healthy rivalry be- 
tween the different sects, each doing its best to carry 
on a more intense social work, and to discuss man 's prob- 
lem.s, both spiritual and earthly. 

On the other hand, madam, a religious monopoly does 
not provoke healthy competition, and what is worse, 
as we have seen in Latin America, it stimulates a certain 
noxious indolence towards the most serious social prob- 
lems. How do you explain, madam, that the church 
in your country has not undertaken a formidable cam- 
paign against the r'^oholism which is destroying your 
people ? The chu/ '^ has not arrayed itself against 

alcoholism, but ' .3n and is a manufacturer 

of wines for sale; that is to saj^, the church has its 
economic interests allied with the alcoholism of the 
people. Without a religious monopoly, this could not 
happen. In a small Latin American village, where the 
Catholic priest leased for years to a saloon-keeper a plot 
of ground adjoining the church, he was at once dis- 
possessed when a Protestant pastor began his religious 
work in the same village. That same priest led a licen- 
tious life, which was subjected to very considerable re- 
straint when he saw that in order to keep his congrega- 
tion he had to preach not only with words but by exam- 
ple, since another rival priest of the Church of Christ 
preached both with words and example. For the benefit 
of Eoman Catholicism itself, madam, there ought to be in 
Latin America the most absolute freedom of conscience 
separating the state from the church. 



174 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

A live religion, madam, is a religion tliat battles, a 
religion that does its best to gain more and more 
adepts, to add more and more souls to its bosom. Never 
is a religion purer, never is it healthier, never is it 
stronger than when it is fighting with the utmost ardor. 
The first days of persecuted Christianity were the days 
of its most austere principles, of its most self-denying 
martyrs. When the struggle ceases, moss commences to 
grow. 

This effort of dissenting religions to conquer Latin 
America is only a proof of the moral strength of these 
creeds that are looking for expansion. Your husband, 
madam, should not fear this entrance of new Christian 
sects into your country. It can already be seen that they 
have done and are doing a moral work of the most 
profound significance. What Latin America needs most 
is education and character, and our religious missions 
are giving it just that. A welcome should be given 
in Spanish America to this new social force which, 
at the same time, will be called upon to intensify and 
purify the social strength of ruling Eoman Catholicism. 
These evangelists are sincere believers who do things in 
accordance with their beliefs. Almost all of them 
are abstainers and lead a pure private life that is an 
example for their neighbors, whether they profess an- 
other faith or no faith at all. 

One of the causes of stagnancy, madam, for a re- 
ligious denomination is the fact that its apostles and 
priests are supported by the state. A religion sup- 
ported by the state is a parasitic religion, it has no 
life of its own, it does not need to fight, it need not 
be so jealous of maintaining its high moral standards. 
The worst feature about it is not the injustice of taking 



BELIGION 175 

money from every one, from the members of different 
creeds to support a determined church; the worst of 
it is not that a citizen is obliged to help support a 
church to which he does not belong; the worst of it is 
that those who do not contribute directly feel themselves 
more widely separated from it. The church should be 
supported by the voluntary contributions of its followers, 
by part of their work, efforts and money. In this way 
there is a ^eater bond of union between the church 
and its parishioners. 

In my country there is absolute separation between 
church and state, and our moral advancement and a 
large part of our intellectual progress are due to religion 
as it is preached and practiced here. This school of 
national morality in this country is the Church of 
Christ. It is the philosophy of Christ that has made 
our democracy. It is the philosophy of Christ put into 
practice by our churches that has saved us and will 
save us in all great national crises. Abolish suddenly 
the active Christian church in our country and you 
may be sure that we should not conduct ourselves 
morally, or with justice and equity, towards the world 
at the end of our present war. Of course you will 
agree with me, madam, that the morals, even of those 
who profess no religion, the morals of skeptics and of 
unbelievers, receive benefit from the influence of believ- 
ers. They do not know that they are the product of a 
reflex education. They do not know that the healthy, 
pure and Christian life of believers is the moral code 
that they observe in their very actions. 

Doubtless, madam, there are men who, without be- 
ing religious, do nevertheless proceed in all their human 
acts in accordance with the purest moral code; they 



176 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

are honorable, truthful, merciful and pure. Of these 
men Latin America has a large number, and this is the 
basis of argument advanced by religious skeptics to 
explain their skepticism. But where have these men 
obtained their moral standard? From the Christian 
religion ruling in their surroundings. Religion is ca- 
pable of making those within its bosom good and by 
extension, by reflex education, those not within its bosom. 

I recall to mind, madam, that at a scientific conference 
held some years ago in the University of Chile an 
eminent Roman Catholic priest said, in the course of 
his address before a full assembly of the members, that 
there could be no moral men without religion. The 
president of the University, the venerable historian 
Don Diego Barros Arana, an old man of unblemished 
rectitude and morality, rose to his feet and interrupted 
the Roman Catholic speaker with glowing words, asking 
him if he meant by this that Francisco Bilbao, Guillermo 
Matta and many other great Chileans, all well known 
atheists, were immoral. He cited his own case as that 
of a man without religious faith, and demanded to know 
if he also was immoral. 

I do not remember what answer was made by the 
priest, but it seems to me that he should have replied 
that these luminaries of Chilean intellectuality whicH 
professed no religion had acquired their austere rules 
of conduct from the code of moral ambient suffused by 
the Christian Church. It behooves us to follow very 
closely the way in which the threads are woven in the 
warp of the moral Christian standard. A woman at- 
tends the services of her church every Sunday. Her 'son, 
her brother, her husband, her neighbor, all are indi- 
rectly influenced by her own moral force. It is not 



RELIGION 111 

that she gQos T^oiind repeating the sermons she has heard, 
but that these have become dynamic, and others are 
inS.aenced by her example. Was not the mother of 
'Don Diego Barros Arana a sincerely religious woman, 
and was she not, by her example, the first moral teacher 
of the future president of the University? 

A foreigner may come to my country on a visit, may 
stop at a hotel and enjoy all the privileges of our re- 
publican life, without incurring the obligation of going 
to Europe to fight in the defense of the country which 
has given him hospitality; he takes advantage of our 
prosperity at the cost of sacrifices made by others. So 
also a skeptic in a Christian community is like a for- 
eigner who lives sheltered by the moral ambient at the 
cost of the faith and devotion of others. 

One of those skeptics told me once: *'I accept the 
moral principles of the missionaries that you send us, 
but not the religion they preach. I have no religion." 

That is to say, he is ready to take, and does take 
the rose from the rose-bush, but he does not bother about 
the plant, nor does he fertilize or water the earth in 
which it grows. I would tell that atheist, all those 
atheists and apostles of Latin American skepticism that 
even though they do not believe in Jesus Christ, even 
though they consider Him a myth, they ought to respect 
that myth as the most beautiful and useful mystery of 
the Christian faith, as the inspiration for the moral 
code that puts man above his egoistic interests. Irre- 
ligious doctrines, which have become a serious disease in 
Latin America, are destructive, iconoclast and discourag- 
ing, not offering anything in their place for the elevation 
of the soul. 

And you have probably noticed, as I have, to what this 



178 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

skepticism is due. Latin America, in spite of its oiHcial 
Roman Catholic religion, is the one skeptical continen-t 
of the world. How do you explain that the Catholic 
religion being official there, the people so often rise 
up against its apostles? Why this religious contempt 
among the students of the university and among the 
workingmen? Just because religion is official, because 
there is no tolerance for different denominations, be- 
cause there is a religious ttnist. It has been the in- 
tolerant spirit of Latin America that has made it and is 
making it every day more and more skeptical. 

The fact that a religion struggles to extend its faith, 
without impositions, but by means of persuasion, is not 
only natural, but plausible. Every man should try 
to set for himself the highest moral standard and exert 
himself to extend that moral standard to others. Man 
is not instinctively good. It is the ascending advance of 
civilization that makes him better. And the most power- 
ful force that is working for the moral betterment of 
man is religion. Religion is to the moral progress of 
peoples what steam is to the speed of the locomotive. But 
in order that this religion be an impulsive element of 
moral betterment it must be submitted to the purifying 
forces of free competition, of wide discussion, which is 
impossible under a regime of monopoly. Religions are 
the courses of human ethics, and like courses in physics, 
biology and sociology, they must change continually, 
keeping step with the progress of the world. In olden 
times medicine did not advance because the study of 
anatomy, autopsy and the analysis of the human body 
with the scalpel of science was considered sacrilegious. 
Neither can progress be made in religion if it is divorced 
from analysis, from a critical spirit or from free dis- 



RELIGION 179 

cussion or if it is left locked up in bell-glasses. There 
can be no moral advance in a country where the national 
course in ethics, religion, is stagnant and governed by 
laws that are imposed on the people, that cannot be dis- 
cussed. That is happening in Latin America and is 
not happening in my country. 

Religious tolerance, madam, is, in my conception, one 
of the most pressing necessities of Latin America. It 
is necessary that men of all political parties should 
understand this and that the Roman Catholics, who 
have a religious monopoly in those countries, should un- 
derstand it, too. With the adoption of religious toler- 
ance the very Roman Catholic religion will become 
stronger. 

Pardon me, madam, if I have offended you by what 
I have said here; but if you will think over the matter 
well, you may perhaps find I am right. 

Your Friend from the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER IX 



PROHIBITION 



o 



NE week later, Miss Jones received the next 
letter from the Chilean correspondent. 



Chicago, 111., 1918, 

My dearest: 



I was on my way from New Orleans, and conversing 
in the dining-car with a fellow-passenger. We were 
drinking beer. The landscape was splendid; the sky 
of a limpid blue ; birds were darting about freely, wititi- 
out any obstacle in their way to soar on high, to fly 
through the clouds in any direction. 

The waiter approached and took up our half -drained 
glasses. 

''Dry State," he said. 

The locomotive was emitting its tuft of smoke in a dry 
State. Neither champagne, wine, beer nor anything 
containing alcohol could be drunk. 

Without doubt the birds flying through the air in 
perfect freedom were laughing at us through the win- 
dows. Man, the king of animals, this privileged being, 
the master of earth, sea and sky, may not drink what 
he wishes; he is not the master of his own will. An 
unreasonable law, imposed by a group of unbalanced 

180 



PROHIBITION 181 

minds upon a meek and obedient multitude, orders that 
all must abstain from drinking what the State forbids 
them to drink. 

In France, the student of a state college has a glass 
of wine with his meals, and a patient in the state hos- 
pital has also his glass of wine at his bedside. In 
Germany beer is as air to the individual, but in this 
country of liberty man has to submit to the dictatorial 
caprices of a preposterous law which ventures to dic- 
tate what a man should put into his mouth. Even 
though two-thirds of the population of this country 
were against the consumption of alcoholic drinks, I do 
not see why they should want to oblige the remaining 
third to submit to their determined tastes, instead 
of being themselves content to go without. Why is not 
the consumption of meat, cheese and butter prohibited ? 

There are already many States, counties and cities of 
this country in which the consumption of all alcoholic 
drinks is prohibited. More than sixty per cent of the 
population is already obliged to abstain from drinking 
wine and beer. Everything seems to point that within 
a year the whole country will be dry, since to pass a 
federal law only two-thirds of the votes of both houses 
are required. 

And the prohibitionists, already delighted with the 
triumphs which they foresee, announce that they will 
soon start a campaign against nicotine, cigars and 
cigarettes. There are many people already who seri- 
ously announce future campaigns against tea and coffee, 
The}^ will form the League Against Caffeine and Theine. 
A campaign against the use of salt is also to be initiated. 

This is an absurdity that has no name. It is an 
attack on the liberty of the individual and an unjust 



182 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

dispossession of all those wlio have fortunes invested 
in vineyards, breweries and distilleries. Billions of 
dollars will be thrown into the street; vineyard plan- 
tations will become useless, large beer factories will 
have to close np; hundreds of thousands of men will 
be thrown out of work. More than nine hundred 
million dollars — I have read — invested in business con- 
nected with alcohol will be affected by the prohibition 
madness. And if the whole cauntry goes dry, which 
without doubt is coming to pass, the government will 
lose each year some five hundred millions from taxes 
which it will no longer receive. This is of very little 
importance to these fanatics dominated by the fixed 
idea that alcohol is harmful to the health. 

But this is a lie. Alcohol is only harmful when used 
in excess. Everything is harmful when used in excess, 
even bread, milk and rice. A proof of the fallacy of 
prohibition argument is apparent from the fact that 
they do not oppose the sale of alcohol as a medicine. 
A doctor can prescribe champagne or malt as a recon- 
stituent. You know very well that two bottles of stout 
a day were indispensable for you while you were nour- 
ishing each one of our children. Beer is the best milk- 
forming beverage known. Made of cereals, a producer 
of heat and energy, it has been fittingly called liquid 
bread. How many many times we have revived with a 
little cognac persons who had fainted ! How many colds 
you and I have got rid of by taking a glass of strong 
whisky and hot water ! Do you remember the time when 
your cousin Christina was between life and death ? Don't | 
you remember that her strength was kept up with spoon 
f uls of champagne ? Can it be denied, besides, that ; 



PROHIBITION 183 

alcoliol is an appetizer ? Why are cocktails taken before 
meals all over the world ? 

Do not imagine, on the other hand, that this dry- 
law will be strictly obeyed. Sufficient to prove my 
assertion is the one fact that in Washington, after the 
city became dry, twenty-six empty whisky bottles were 
discovered (and photographed for publication in the 
newspapers) in the very Capitol building, consumed in 
one week by the self-same legislators who had passed 
the law. 

Up to the present, in the dry States, the law has not 
been obeyed, and alcohol has been introduced on the 
sly from neighboring States ; but with the whole country 
dry the consuming public of drinks slightly alcoholic, 
such as wine and beer, will have to manufacture alcohol 
for its consumption in their own homes. And as it is 
easier to manufacture whisky than wine or beer, real 
harm will be done to consumers of slightly alcoholic 
drinks. IModerate drinkers will become whisky drinkers. 
That is to say, prohibition will encourage intoxication. 
Analogous phenomena have already been noticed. In 
factories where smoking is prohibited the habit of chew- 
ing tobacco has developed among the smokers. 

In the diTj States the consumption of narcotics such 
as cocaine, morphine and heroin is such that the situa- 
tion has become alarming. I have recently read that in 
the State of New York there are more than 200,000 in- 
dividuals who are slaves to different kinds of narcotics. 
Well-known authorities on the subject say that there are 
in the United States more than a million addicts of 
heroin. Heroin is the worst form of opium. It is 
three and a half times as strong as morphine. It is 



184 THE GULF OF BIISUNDERSTANDING 

a chemical product which originated in Germany, the 
use of which is strictly prohibited there. 

JBesides, this is a phenomenon that can be seen in 
all parts. In the dry districts of Norway the con- 
sumption of ether and perfumes as clandestine drinks 
has become very common. In Germany, .since the anti- 
alcoholic agitation began, the consumption of opium 
has increased. In 1907, 29,200 kilograms were con- 
sumed ; in 1908, 54,200 kilograms ; in 1909, 73,400 kilo- 
grams. Everywhere it has been found that an attempt 
to even partially suppress the consumption of alcohol 
brings as a result an increase in the use of narcotic 
drugs. 

Oh! life is a vale of tears, even the Bible tells us, 
but can we not wipe these tears away at will ? I do 
not advocate ebriety, far be it from me to advocate 
such an absurdity, but I do advocate the right of 
every person to slightly benumb his senses in order to 
rest from the penury and fatigue of the day, in order 
to solace his mind. What! That man going to his 
dentist with a sharp pain in his upper left molar can 
get cocaine, ether or creosote from a doctor to ease 
his physical pain, whereas that other returning home, 
weary with the day's work, disillusioned, dejected, may 
he not ask his wife for a draught of wine to deaden 
his moral pain ? 

Why? Why? In virtue of what right may a group 
of men — or rather of women — who have never known 
the joy of living, who have never known anything of 
bitterness, or of lost illusions, who have never reached 
the heights of genius, nor descended to the depths of 
misery; neuter beings of an irritating normality; in 
virtue of what right may they impose their will on 



PROHIBITION 185 

millions of persons who think differently from them? 

It is unquestionable that the abuse of alcohol does 
harm, as do all abuses. I am an open enemy of the 
abuse of alcohol. Nothing is more repugnant to me 
than a drunkard; but the moderate use of alcohol — the 
glass of wine that you and I have always taken at 
home — is a human necessity, wanted by the best of 
men, those who feel and think deeply, those who live 
an intense life and therefore require the stimulants 
that have become an inherent part of their daily life: 
alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee. 

Is alcohol weakening ? After drinking wine or cham- 
pagne can v/e v\'ork as efficiently as we can without 
one or the other? The prohibitionists insist a great 
deal on these points and present statistics in which 
different test cases are tabulated. Mathematical prob- 
lems have been given for solution to persons not under 
the influence of alcohol, and then to the same persons 
when under the influence of a little alcohol, say a glass of 
wine or beer, similar problems have been put, and it has 
been shown that efficiency diminishes in the second case. 
Quite so, but what does this prove? Make the same 
experiment with persons who have partaken of a hearty 
meal, comparing their efficiency with others who have not 
eaten, and it will be seen that food is also momentarily 
enervating. The body should rest after eating and 
drinking the same as after having taken strenuous 
exercise. The harm done by a drink cannot be meas- 
ured by the lesser or greater efficiency of the consumer 
while the effects of the drink are still present. Like- 
wise, sleep reduces the efficiency of a person to zero. 
Give a mathematical problem to a person asleep. He 
is incapable of solving it, which is worse than solving 



186 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

it slowly, as in the case of one under the influence 
of a glass of wine. Are we going to abolish sleep as 
injurious because it reduces efficiency ? Alcohol does not 
permanently reduce efficiency; it reduces tension, pro- 
motes rest and, consequently, like sleep, really increases 
efficiency. 

However, I do not suggest that wine or beer be 
taken in order to do more efficient work, even though 
many poets have written their best poems when under 
the stimulating influence of a lightly alcoholic drink 
or in the midst of clouds of tobacco smoke. I do not 
pretend that more efficient work is done when digest- 
ing a banquet nor that more active work can be done 
during sleep. But weak alcoholic drink satisfies a want 
strongly felt by humanity; its use is due to the stimu- 
lating capacity that alcohol has of intensifying rest 
and inducing forgetfulness. Edgar Allan Poe, the most 
inspired of American poets, was a hard drinker. By 
an ancient enactment the Poet Laureate of England 
received from the government, in addition to his al- 
lowance of one hundred pounds a year, twenty "fair 
casques of good Canary wine.*' 

Life should be lived, not as a continued sacrifice, 
but in the enjoyment of as many healthful pleasures as 
we can give ourselves. True, these pleasures cost money, 
but take away from mankind its pleasures and it will 
fall sick of neurasthenia in two weeks. 

The perennial state of mankind is one of suffering, 
of sorrow, of anxiety, of weariness and of anxiety for 
the future. Happiness is a transitory state. The pleas- 
ure of eating consists only in relief from the pangs of 
hunger; the pleasure of sleeping is only a mitigation 
of the discomfort caused by sleepiness, and satisfied love 



PROHIBITION 187 

is but gratified desire. Why should the glass of wine 
taken at meals, which is a necessity of all normal people, 
be denied for the alleviation of this constant load of 
care? 

The fact that some abuse alcohol, few, very few in 
proportion to the immense majority who drink moder- 
ately, is not a reason to sacrifice all. Water is respon- 
sible for so many misfortunes, for so many deaths. How 
many people have been drowned at sea in shipwrecks 
or in rivers when bathing? Is this a reason why we 
should be against water ^ 

Has not every person the right to live as he pleases, 
provided that he does no harm to anybody else? Why 
should he be deprived of the right to drink a glass 
of beer ? I cannot get this into my head ; nor will you 
be able to do so ; our mode of thinking is fundamentally 
at variance with that of this country. If the prohibi- 
tionist has the right to impose his abstinence on those 
who do drink, why should not those who do drink 
have the right to compel the teetotaler to take wine? 
In our country everybody drinks, with a few excep- 
tions. Would it be logical to i)ermit this majority that 
likes to have a glass of wine with their meals to force 
teetotalers to do so? Clearly, no more logical than in 
the opposite case. Let those drink who wish to do so, 
and let those refrain who do not wish it; let each side 
carry on their propaganda as they see fit, but let us 
make no law dictating to each person his menu. 

There is a very big difference, which the prohibition- 
ists do not appear to see, between beer containing three 
and four and a half per cent of alcohol, wine or cham- 
pagne with ten per cent, and whisky, rum and brandy 
containing from thirty to sixty-five per cent of alcohol. 



188 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

These last named drinks are harmful, unless taken in 
small quantities, because they are habit-forming. You 
know very well that I have always taken the same 
amount of wine, just as you have. "Wine does not form 
the habit of drinking, nor beer either. The person who 
begins by taking a little whisky requires more later on, 
and even more still later, as with the drug habit. This 
is why I am in favor of prohibiting the sale of strong 
alcoholic drinks, but I do not mean that this prohibition 
should be extended to wine and beer. 

I think that if the United States goes dry the use of 
morphine, opium, heroin and other drugs will be in- 
creased to such an extent that there will be a strong 
reaction, and the country will have to abolish its pro- 
hibition amendment. In the dry States of the Union 
the manufacture, sale and use of patent medicines, the 
principal ingredient of which is alcohol, have increased 
a great deal. Is there a remedy for rheumatism with 
ten, twenty or thirty per cent of alcohol? Is there an- 
other cure-all for the kidneys, liver, cancer, and bubonic 
plague, with alcohol as its base? Well, neither Tom, 
Dick nor Harry suffer from rheumatism, cancer or 
bubonic plague, but like every normal man, they have 
their blue days, hours of weariness and disillusions and 
they want to forget ; so they have recourse to these drugs 
and poison their bodies with fake medicines for diseases 
from which they do not suffer. Everybody will become 
a consumer of patent medicines. This is only to be ex- 
pected unless the country continues to drink alcohol 
secretly, and in this case it would not consume beer 
or wine, but almost pure alcohol, since those who dis- 
obey the law will not do so by producing drinks contain- 
ing three per cent alcohol but those with seventy or 



PROHIBITION 189 

eighty per cent. Counterfeiters do not make pennies or 
nickels, but one, ^ve or twenty dollar bills. 

It has not been the men or nations that abstain from 
drink that have most distinguished themselves. China 
is a dry country and Beligum is one of the countries 
that consumes the most beer per inhabitant. Belgium 
consumes fourteen liters of pure alcohol a head every 
year. Which is more civilized, Belgium or China? 
Germany, a consumer of beer on a large scale, has in 
thirty years increased its population from forty to 
sixty millions. 

However, you must not suppose that everybody here 
meekly accepts this prohibitionist movement. Cardinal 
Gibbons, a representative of our church in this country, 
published last year the most violent protest against 
the prohibitionist movement. He said: 

*'I should consider the passage of a Federal Prohibi- 
tion Law a national catastrophe, little short of a crime 
against the spiritual and physical well-being of the 
American people. I am firmly and unalterably opposed 
(also) to the enactment of (even) state-wide prohibi- 
tory legislation, for such sweeping measures mean 
that the rural districts, for instance, can force their 
sumptuary judgment upon the urban districts. This 
is a denial of self-government, an infringement upon 
personal liberty . . . 

"The history of the world do^vn to the present time 
demonstrates the fact that people always have indulged, 
and, in ail probability, always will indulge in the use 
of alcoholic drinks. It is true that the use of wines and 
liquors, when abused, leads to lamentable consequences; 
yet, the best of things are liable to abuse. Take the 
tongue, for instance. We all know the social and 
domestic joy and utility which is derived from con- 
versation, and yet the misuse of the tongue leads daily 



190 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

to lying and misrepresentation, to quarrels and slander, 
to bloodshed, and often to murder. Should we then be 
justified in putting a padlock on our mouths because of 
the occasional misuse of the tongue ? ' ' 

This American movement in favor of prohibition 
"would not alarm me if it were not for the fact that 
these Yankees in all their reform movements imme- 
diately think of a world campaign. They will soon be- 
gin to extend their doctrines to Latin America, the 
nations of which they consider the orphans of this world. 
And they, of course, are to be the tutors. 

Each day I see more clearly that the Yankee peril 
is for us multiform, political, commercial, religious and 
social. 



Your affectionate husband, 



Miss Jones was very familiar with the prohibition 
movement of her country. She had, therefore, no need 
to make great efforts of investigation in order to write 
the usual comments, but it took her full two days to 
write the following answer; 

Madam : 

The problem that your husband treats in this letter 
has — like the woman suffrage problem — three aspects. 
First: Is the consumption of alcohol in small or large 
quantities harmful or beneficial to health? Second: 
Is it advisable or not for society to stop its consump- 
tion ? Third : Is it right or is it not right to stop the 



PEOHIBITION 191 

manufacture and consumption of alcohol, if the majority 
of the people are in favor of doing so ? 

The fight for prohibition is not new in our country. 
It began with our colonial life. Never, of course, has 
there been any doubt that alcohol is harmful if taken 
in sufficient quantity to caiise intoxication. It is the 
consumption of alcohol in small quantities that we are 
going to consider, that little taste of alcohol which your 
husband claims is a necessity for man to deaden the 
miseries of life. 

But before going further, madam, allow me to pro- 
test against that pessimistic philosophy of your hus- 
band who believes life to be a vale of torture, of sor- 
rows, of ungratefulness, a prolonged situation of suf- 
fering with, here and there, an oasis of pleasure as a 
mere accident of assuaged pain. 

I had already noted this tendency of Latin Ameri- 
can philosophy. There is a stamp of sadness on the 
Latin American soul, and I do not believe — as do some 
thinkers — that this stamp has been placed there by 
the Argentine pampas, the Chilean deserts, or the 
Brazilian forests. No, this stamp has been placed there 
by the dejected and taciturn Indian who has mingled 
his blood in the veins of Iberian America. It is true 
that there is a considerable proportion of the popu- 
lation without native blood, and I think I am right in 
supposing that neither you nor your husband have 
inherited the strain. It is, however, also true that the 
Spaniard is a pessimist, and pre-war French philosophy, 
which has inspired Latin America, was also pessimistic. 

At this very moment, when I am writing to you, I 
have before me on my desk a letter from a friend of 
mine in Chile. This letter has wide borders in black. 



192 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

The girl who wrote it has lost an aunt whom I did 
not even know. With this black-edged note-paper, 
which my friend always uses, and which she will con- 
tinue to use for the next six months, she spreads her 
grief, intensified by much outward parade, among the 
whole circle of her acquaintances. I can see her now, 
all in black, even with a black handkerchief; the piano 
of the house closed and all theaters and parties under a 
ban. AYhy perpetuate and intensify melancholy? Sor- 
row is looked for and courted, and then comes a drink 
to deaden the pain ! Among the poorer classes of Latin 
America, a funeral, a wake, is sufficient motive to start 
a carouse. Sorrow is first provoked and stimulated, and 
then drink is supplied to allay it. Years ago, in Latin 
America, rich people, when they lost a member of the 
family, used to hire women mourners, professionals in 
the art of crying, the tears of the family not sufficing 
to voice the lamentations over the loss. 

We suffer no less from our misfortunes^ nor do we 
less sincerely reverence our dead, but with a more op- 
timistic philosophy v/e consider death as a natural thing, 
and we honor the memory of our dead in a very different 
way. A tomb in your cemetery, surrounded with lugu- 
brious cypress trees, is a hymn to death. Our Leland 
Stanford, Jr., University is the counterpart to your 
mausoleum, an American memorial shrine, a hymn to 
life, to effort, a monument erected by the dead boy's 
parents to his memory. Another mr*tlier, Matilde Zieg- 
ler, has a blind son. Her prayers, m:^ addressed to 
heaven; while here below she works cheerfully, extend- 
ing her love to all other blind people and founding a 
magazine for blind people which carries her name. 
There are endless cases like these. If these persons, in 



PEOEIBITION 193 

order to drown their troubles, were to seek those be- 
numbing effects of alcohol which your husband extols, 
they would be acting selfishly instead of looking for 
mitigation of their grief by working for the welfare 
and happiness of others. 

If the workman comes home tired after a day's work 
of ten or twelve hours and finds relief in a glass of 
wine because it benumbs his senses, it means that that 
workman should not do hard work during ten or twelve 
hours a day ; it means that he has been kept working at 
a very high pressure, and the remedy consists in lower- 
ing the pressure. 

To assume that alcohol when taken moderately in- 
creases human happiness because it slightly benumbs 
man's senses, and in this way enables him better to 
put up with the pains of life, is the same as to say 
that the dog is happier than man because it has less^ 
preoccupations, and that plants are happier than the 
dog, and for the same reason the stone happier than 
the plant. Nirvana would be the 7ie plus ultra of hap- 
piness. 

Moreover, if I wished to argue like your husband 
when he says that we, to be consistent, should be against 
water as much as against alcohol, on account of all the 
shipwrecks on the ocean, I would tell your husband 
that, to be consistent, he should also preach the doctrine 
of having our eyes taken out so as not to see so much 
human suffering. 

But no; sensibility is one of the most valuable at- 
tributes of man, in my opinion — useful for enjoyment 
and for suffering. If our body had not the capacity 
to suffer from a blow, or from sickness, we should lack 
the note of alarm urging us to remedy the evil. If 



194 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

a child felt no pain when placing his finger in a flame, 
he would not take it out, but would allow it to be 
burned to a cinder. The worries and the anxieties of 
man should not be quieted by benumbing the senses, but 
by shunning the causes of these anxieties. If a man has 
reasons for being discontented with life he gains noth- 
ing by benumbing his senses; he should find a remedy 
for his restlessness by avoiding the cause of it. 

Thus the social organism is affected by the misfor- 
tune of the community. The remedy is never found 
in a glass of wine to benumb the senses. This is equiv- 
alent to renunciation or desertion. 

Assuming, however, for a moment that alcohol is 
harmless when taken moderately, and assuming that 
some people with strong power of will do not acquire 
the drink habit, we must remember that there are hun- 
dreds of thousands — nay, millions — of other people with 
weak will power, who, moderate drinkers in the begin- 
ning, become bigger drinkers every day. Alcohol is a 
drug, and, like morphine, it is habit-forming. 

Alcohol has, it is true, the faculty of making one for- 
get momentarily, of quieting anxieties, and your hus- 
band, happy, with a beautiful home, with a loving wife, 
with abundant resources — does not drink to forget, but 
by social habit; but when he invites others to drink, 
how often may he not initiate into the habit persons 
with less will power than he himself and who have real 
anxieties or worries to forget. 

The fact that there may be a small number of people 
who are able to drink moderately, who may not acquire 
the drink habit, and who — this is merely hypothetical — 
may not suffer, nor their children either, from the mod- 
erate use of alcohol, would not justify the manufacture 



PROHIBITION 195 

and sale of alcohol for them, since the law could not 
differentiate. By their example they would be doing- 
harm to society. 

That alcohol is an ansesthetic, not a stimulant, has 
already been fully proven, as well as the fact that its 
action on the organs and tissues of the body — ^whether 
taken moderately or in excess — is essentially that of 
a poison. It is in no case a food, and much less a medi- 
cine, as your husband says. In 1915 the Grand Com- 
mittee of the American Pharmacopoeia struck out 
liquors of all kinds from the list of legitimate medicines, 
and in June of 1918 at the National Convention of the 
American Medical Association the president of the asso- 
ciation, in the midst of unanimous approval, called upon 
all doctors to unite their efforts in favor of prohibition 
as the best way of promoting public health. 

The fact that alcohol is made of grapes, cereals, and 
other food substances has brought about the mistaken 
belief that it is a food. Hence the name 'liquid bread" 
given to beer. 

The fact that you may have believed that malt liquor 
was good for you while you nursed your children was 
only an illusion. The alcohol consumed brought about 
in you a transitory sensation of well-being on account of 
semi-insensibility. This has made you seek the rest that 
this state demands, and rest has done you good, because 
it is necessary to the woman who is going to be a mother ; 
but you would have been able to obtain that rest with- 
out drinking alcohol and with more real benefit to 
yourself. 

The minute investigations that have been made with 
regard to the oft'spring of fathers who drink in modera- 
tion and to excess have shown that alcohol consumed 



196 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

by fathers — in large or small quantities — impairs the 
integrity of the child, especially harming his nervous 
system. These conclusions have been arrived at by 
Professor Taav Laitinen, of the University of Helsing- 
fors, in Finland, who had under observation seventeen 
thousand children of fathers who were moderate 
drinkers. Professor Gustav von Bunge, of Basel, Switz- 
erland, has made investigations in the cases of fathers 
who indulged in the drink habit with different degrees 
of intensity, and he proved that physical defects in the 
offspring are in proportion to the intensity of the drink 
habit on the part of the fathers. I could fill pages and 
pages by quoting thousands of scientific studies, care- 
fully made by investigators of all countries, who agree 
that the consumption of alcohol by fathers is harmful 
to their children. The scientific investigations made by 
the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory under the direction 
of Dr. Benedict are conclusive in this respect. Br. Ben- 
edict and his fellow workers used to believe that alcohol 
consumed in small quantities could be utilized by the 
system and serve as a food. These investigations have 
proven conclusively that alcohol is always, and in every 
case, a poisonous narcotic. 

From the moment that it was proven that alcohol 
is the toxin of a fungus, the old controversy about 
whether alcohol was a poison or not ended. Experiments 
made with toxins of all classes, from those of the highest 
orders of life, such as man, to those of inferior life, such 
as microorganisms, have permitted the establishment of 
a law governing the action of all poisons, to wit: the 
toxin of a form of life is a poison for the form of life 
that produces it, and a poison for all forms of life of a 
superior type. Consequently, alcohol, a toxin produced 



PROHIBITION 197 

by the fermentation of a fun^is, one of tlie lower forms 
of life, is a poison for all other forms of life, such as 
plants of a higher grade and animals, and, of course, 
most especially for man, with his marvelously developed 
nervous system. 

Some believe that alcohol by burning itself prevents 
the burning and destruction of the tissues. In fact, 
alcohol reduces the process of nutrition of the cells and 
fosters the accumulation of unnecessary fat. This is 
why beer makes one fat, but this artificial obesity is 
harmful to the organism. 

The mere fact that organic, vegetable or animal, ma- 
terial can be preserved in alcohol is proof that no 
vital process can be developed in alcohol. 

No superior animal can live if given six drops of al- 
cohol for every thousand drops of blood. Five ounces 
of pure alcohol, a small glassful, is a sufficient dose to 
cause the death of a man in ten hours. 

None of the digestive juices can digest alcohol, so 
that the latter passes unaltered to the blood. About 
twenty per cent, is absorbed by the stomach and eighty 
per cent, by the intestines. The larger part is found 
in the blood one hour after having been taken. When 
alcohol enters the blood, it attacks its constituent parts 
and begins to weaken them by depriving them of water 
and oxygen and coagulating the protein and albumen. 

The myriads of red globules, live vehicles that trans- 
port their load of oxygen from the lungs to the cells, 
and their returning cargo of waste matter from the 
cells to the lungs, are attacked by alcohol. Their pro- 
tective cover is penetrated as it is by chloroform and 
ether. 

Your husband says that sleep is also benumbing and 



198 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

should be condemned as alcohol. Sleep is a natural 
phenomenon. On awakening, man feels fresh and 
strong with increased vigor, whereas when he recovers 
from the effects of alcohol he actually feels only more 
downcast. With the natural rest of sleep man has 
gained; with the artificial rest of alcohol he has lost. 

That alcohol vivifies the imagination and is a muse 
of inspiration for thinkers, novelists and poets is an 
illusion. In a party where alcohol is consumed every 
one becomes more loquacious; but at the same time 
each one places himself on an inferior intellectual level 
and is ready to concede and applaud that which he 
would not concede and applaud under normal condi- 
tions. He is less exacting. As regards our poet, Edgar 
Allan Poe, his biographers have clearly established the 
fact that he never wrote a line when his head was 
not absolutely clear and free from all alcoholic influence. 

That the suppression of alcohol would stimulate the 
consumption of narcotics is a vain assertion. Morphine, 
heroin and opium are consumed on a large scale in 
States and countries where alcohol rules. Very often 
alcohol is the antechamber of morphine. 

Consequently, madam, those fighters who are work- 
ing for the abolition of the consumption of alcohol in 
society, those whom your husband calls fanatics, are 
the phagocytes of the social body; they are the fanatics 
who protect the life and health of society. 

It is absurd, madam, to speak of the thousands of 
men who are going to be thrown out of work when 
the manufacture of alcoholic drinks is prohibited. Our 
country needs more and more men for useful pursuits; 
the more men thrown out of these industries, the better. 
This applies to capital also. Vineyards and distilleries 



PROHIBITION 199 

can be used for the production of other necessities, as 
has already been the case in some States. As for the 
revenue which the government will not receive, this 
means nothing either, because a nation which prohibits 
the use of alcohol is much more efficient, much richer 
and better able to pay taxes derived, not from pain, 
degradation and ruin, but from happiness, dignity and 
prosperity. 

The Russian Secretary of Finance, at the beginning 
of the world war, estimated, soon after the manufac- 
ture of vodka was prohibited, that Russia, with a third 
of its workmen in the army, had nevertheless doubled 
its producing capacity. The British Minister of Muni- 
tions estimated that national efficiency increased 25 
per cent, merely by the imposition of measures moder- 
ating the consumption of alcohol. All contributions 
which the State receives from alcohol are insufficient 
to cover the expense incurred by the vice, misery, crime, 
and disease which alcohol causes. 

Gathering together the threads of argument, it can 
be said that there is a moral reason, a scientific reason, 
and an economic reason for combating alcohol. Moral 
because alcohol is always leagued with vice, gambling, 
and prostitution; scientific because it has been proved 
that alcohol fosters the ruin of the individual's health 
and that of his children; economic because alcohol re- 
duces the efficiency of the drinker, whether he consumes 
it in large or small quantities. 

Accepting all this, there still remains to be answered 
that part of the letter in which your husband says tiiat 
the anti-alcoholic laws of our States and the Federal 
law that is to be passed are infringements on liberty. 

Liberty in our democracy does not mean anarchy; it 



200 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

means the authority of the majority to dictate laws, and 
the respect of all — the majority and the minority — for 
these laws. Among our one hundred million inhabitants 
there surely are not two persons of the same opinion 
about everything. Many that have been for prohibition 
may be against other laws that, nevertheless, they have 
to respect. We are all continually respecting some law 
or order that we do not like, and at the same time we 
have contributed to having some law passed that does 
not please another. But this respect for the will of the 
majority is the base of order in a democracy. 

If the majority passes a law the only thing left for 
the minority to do is to fight for the amendment of 
that law. The same force that passes a law can abolish 
it. The forces that favor alcohol in my country under- 
stand this very well and have labored in prohibitionist 
States to reestablish the saloon. Kansas has been dry 
for about forty years. Since 1880 in four-fifths of the 
State the most drastic anti-alcoholic law has been in 
effect. Seven years ago an attempt was made to ask 
Congress to suppress prohibition. A tenth of the neces- 
sary votes could not be secured. The State of Wash- 
ington became dry in 1915. The most important beer 
factories in the country were there. Seattle, the largest 
city in the State, was the first to vote in favor of pro- 
hibition in the proportion of three to two. After two 
years' experience the law was submitted to the city by 
popular initiative in conformity with the constitution of 
the State, and Seattle voted this time five to one against 
the restoration of alcohol. The whole State then again 
voted, nine to one, in favor of the prohibition of alcohol. 

This triumph of prohibition in my country is not 
tyranny on the part of the minority, as your husband 



PROHIBITION 201 

says, but the will of the majority, and democracy means 
the rule of the majority. If it was almost impossible 
to get a majority against alcohol half a century ago, 
little by little this has become easier because of the 
wider education of the people regarding this grave 
problem, and since this majority has been attained and 
the State has become dry, the object lesson of the dim- 
inution of immorality, increase in savings, fewer jails, 
and increase in business, has been so eloquent that the 
opposers of yesterday are the defenders of to-day. 

A grave problem, madam, for your country is that the 
ruling classes have economic interests so widely con- 
nected with alcoholic industries. Your husband himself 
is a producer of wines. It happens that, unconsciously, 
the man who gets his income from the manufacture of 
wines, champagne, and whisky fails to see the grave 
evil that this industry is for his country. Your coun- 
try's case is the same as that of England, where the 
rulers have interests in alcoholic industries. This may 
be the reason why the people are so given to drink, 
not by nature, nor by instinct, but by reflex education. 
I have often heard the Chilean people — the working 
classes — accused of being drinkers by instinct. The 
manager of the coal mines of Coronel, in Chile, an Eng- 
lishman, told me when I visited those regions that it 
was impossible to suppress the inveterate drink habit 
of the Chilean people. There were five thousand work- 
men there, and the day I visited the mine all were intox- 
icated. It was Independence Day. In another plant 
of your country — El Teniente, a copper deposit worked 
by Americans — there are also five thousand workmen, 
and it is the only prohibitionist population in your coun- 
try. There nobody, neither the manager nor the em- 



202 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

ployees, may have even a drop of beer, but all are eon- 
tented, and the workmen there save more than in any 
other part of the country. If prohibition could be ex- 
tended to the whole of your country it would be an 
Eden by its climate, by its natural wealth, and by the 
intrinsic value of its men and women. 

A Friend of the Other Continent. 



T 



CHAPTER X 

EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 

WO weeks later, on opening the heavy envelope 
from Chicago, Miss Jones asked herself what it 
would be now. She read, as usual, eagerly: 



Chicago, 111., 1918. 

My dearest: 



When crossing the Gulf of Mexico on board the 
Athens, my table companion asked me: 

''Where are you from?" 

"From Santiago, Chile." 

"Where are you going?" 

"To Chicago." 

"Oh! Are you coming to see the baseball games be- 
tween Chicago and New York?" 

• It was perfectly natural, according to the American 
mentality of my interlocutor, for me to come from the 
other hemisphere, a voyage which takes almost a month, 
to see a baseball game in which is at stake what is here 
called the championship of the world, and even of all 
the planets, although it is really only of the United 
States. 

When the steamer was three days distant from New 

203 



204 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Orleans the wireless messages were already able to give 
us news of the world. 

I hasten to read the news bulletin. I wonder what 
has happened in the wide world during the days of 
our isolation. Ah, we are at the gates of the United 
States. The most important news of the bulletins refer 
to the baseball championship. 

At last I arrived in Chicago. It was eight o'clock in 

the morning. I called a taxi to take me to the Hotel 

Blackstone, which is so large that the whole population 

of a Chilean town could be accommodated therein at one 

* time. 

''There are no vacant rooms, sir," I am told. We pass 
on to another hotel. 

''Not a room to be had." 

"No rooms." 

"Full up." 

It has taken me — I observed this out of mere curiosity 
— exactly two hours and eight minutes in an automo- 
bile going from hotel to hotel looking for a room ; and I 
was able to get one in a tenth-rate hotel only by the 
merest chance. I had to stay there for several days. 
Chicago was overflowing with people who had come to 
see the baseball game scheduled for that Sunday. 

Naturally, I wanted to go and see this marvelous 
game. It was impossible. All the good seats were sold 
beforehand, and in order to secure the cheapest of them 
— a dollar and a half — of which fifteen thousand were 
sold a few hours before the game, there was a crowd 
of more than fifteen thousand people waiting, a large 
part of them stationed in front of the ticket boxes all 
night, standing in the midst of glacial cold. 

This baseball championship is played between the 



EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 205 

teams that have been victorious during the year in their 
respective leagues, the American League and the Na- 
tional League. The teams that had won the pennants 
and that were going to play for the world's cham- 
pionship were the Giants of New York and the White 
Sox of Chicago. The first two games are played in 
Chicago and then two in New York. If all four games 
are won by one team, this is the winner of the cham- 
pionship of the whole solar system. 

The Sunday that I arrived in Chicago this city won 
the two games. The two following games were played in 
New York and won by the New Yorkers, making it 
necessary to continue playing until one team had won 
four games. 

I was able to go to the fifth game, which was played 
in Chicago, by buying as a special favor the ticket of a 
gentleman who had to leave Chicago that day. 

''Please keep the stub for me," he said when selling 
me the ticket; "I want to frame it." 

Do not suppose that he said this in fun. He was in 
earnest. That stub was for him more than a souvenir — 
it was a relic. 

The tickets when resold by speculators bring incredible 
sums, sometimes as much as one hundred dollars — so I 
am told. 

The Colosseum, where this stupendous game is played, 
is crammed to overflowing. It is an immense human 
ocean. Forty thousand people have secured seats. 
There is in the air that feeling of breathless expectation 
which precedes the most important events in life. Down 
on the field the players — like epic gladiators in the 
arena — ^by their very appearance electrify the people. 

I had already seen in the shop windows little terra 



206 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

cotta statues representing these players who are going 
to fight for the championship of the alert muscle; and 
it is easier to sell these figures of baseball players than 
statues of Stephenson, Fulton, Pasteur, Shakespeare or 
Marconi. I do not know if I should also include Wash.- 
ington and Lincoln; but this I do know: on the same 
day tliat more seats were needed in a stadium with 
capacity for forty thousand persons paying exorbitant 
prices to see the players in a game, there were about 
a thousand empty seats out of 12,000 in the hall where 
ex-President Taft spoke on the vital subject of the 
United States and the war, there being absolutely no 
charge levied to hear the famous orator. Many distin- 
guished people shook hands with ex-President Taft, but 
the players of the winning team were hugged and car- 
ried in triumph. They are even kissed in public ! When 
one of these players cried for mercy in the midst of these 
manifestations of enthusiasm, one of his admirers forced 
his way up to him and kissed him on the forehead. In 
addition to the glory, the hugs and the kisses, these 
champions also receive fabulous sums in cash. 

A sport critic says that the costumes of these rival 
teams will exercise some influence in the style of 
women's clothes. 

At one side, in the grandstand, I see a line of tele- 
graph operators working busily at their respective posts. 
They are the telegraph operators who are sending out 
all the details of the game for the whole country to read. 
The news distributed regarding all the battles waged 
in Europe is not one-hundredth part so voluminous as 
that published here about the game I am witnessing, 
nor is it so detailed, nor sent out so quickly. One 
hundred million people follow, through newspapers and 



EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 207 

the moving picture, the most minute details of the 
game. On leaving the eolisseum I bought a newspaper 
which gave all the details of the first part of the game 
that I had witnessed some minutes before. 

In the course of the game, particularly when the 
Chicago team scored a point, the arena looked like a 
colossal mad-house with forty thousand lunatics yelling 
in delirium. Suddenly the whole crowd rises to its 
feet as one man. Hats and coats are thrown into the 
air. An indescribable hubbub follows; and this mass 
is composed of all kinds of people: men, w^omen, old, 
young, millionaires and workingmen. 

The White Sox, the Chicago team, win the game. 
The applause seems to shake the globe. It is the frenzy, 
the madness of sport. Another mentality than ours is 
needed to understand this. A boxing champion is also 
converted here into a national hero. The Yankees, be- 
sides being worshipers of the golden fleece, adore brute 
force. 

It is true that in all parts of this country may be 
seen public schools housed in magnificent buildings, uni- 
versities endowed with millions and millions, splendid 
public libraries like those of Washington, New York and 
Chicago, but I cannot understand w^hat part these insti- 
tutions play in the life of these people, since they are 
cultured neither in knowledge nor in manners. 

Every time I am asked my nationality and I answer 
that I am from Chile, people stare at me as if I had 
spoken in another language. Some ask me in what 
State — referring to the States of this country — that city 
is located. I answer: 

"From Chile, South America." 

**Ah! South America!" they exclaim, and then there 



208 TEE GULF OF MISVNDEESTANBINQ 

dawns in their minds the conception of a vast country 
in the far South. They think that South America is a 
single country. They have a vague idea that it is not 
the same as Mexico ; they have perhaps heard of Buenos 
Aires or Rio de Janeiro. Others say : 

''Oh! South America, a good opportunity to make 
money"; and they think of our nations as desolate re- 
gions where any intrepid explorer may possess himself 
of immense tracts of country. 

Really, the ignorance of the Yankee in matters of gen- 

>,, eral culture is fathomless. Any one of our boys who has 
been through high school knows a hundred times more 
than the Yankee who is considered a cultured person 
here. I have spoken to managers of large business 
houses, to engineers and to doctors, in more or less in- 
timate conversation here in the hotel. As a rule, they 
are well prepared in their respective lines and special- 
ties J but they show absolute ignorance as regards culture 
in general. Out of the ordinary is he who can speak 
French or Spanish. They think English is the language 
of the universe and they do not bother to learn other 
languages. For them all the civilization of the world 
is here. 

f The Yankee is of astonishing superficiality. He learns 
only what is absolutely essential to make a living. Of 
the sciences, when he must, he learns the principles and 
the laws, but not the reasons for those principles and 
laws. In mathematics he learns how to use the tables. 
An engineer learns the strength of materials in a week, 
since he is taught only to consult the tables. This is 
why this country has not produced a Pascal, or a Des- 

>> cartes or a Newton. Neither has it produced geniuses 
in literature. Where i^ their Shakespeare, their Cer- 



EDUCATION, CHABACTEB AND HABITS 209 

vantes, their Moliere, their Dante? Kodin would never 
have been able to find in this country a model for his 
'* Thinker." 

But if the schools and colleges do not teach the Yankee 
child the humanities endowing man with the smallest 
modicum of culture possessed by him in all civilized 
countries, neither do they teach manners. 

I have never seen people more badly behaved in any 
other part of the world. They are rude in their language 
with the rudeness of baseball ; they do not know how to 
sit, they put their feet on the table; they do not know 
how to eat, they eat chicken with their hands ; they do 
not know how to greet one, they do not take off their hat 
ito greet even their superiors; they say: this "man," 
this "woman," whereas, in all the other countries of 
the world this "gentleman," this "lady," is the rule 
of speech. In a trolley or railroad car a man seldom 
gets up to give his seat to a lady. 

This is the only country in the world that I know of 
where chewing-gum is used. On Broadway, New York, 
the most brilliant, most complicated and, doubtless, most 
expensive electric sky sign is one advertising chewing- 
gum. Enormous posters glorifying this chev/ing-gum 
may be seen everj^where. Of course, you do not know 
•of it even by name. It is a gum that the people here 
chew incessantly. It is a sticky, disgusting ingredient 
that the jaws of almost all the Yankees are squeezing 
every hour of the day. I cannot understand how this 
disgusting habit has become so popular, to the extreme 
of making the chewing-gum industry as important in 
this country as the match industry. And even tlT?)ugh 
the art of chewing gum is disgusting, you will see well- 



210 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

dressed people of decent appearance, young girls, chew- 
ing gum in theaters and at receptions. 
^ This lack of ceremony can be seen everywhere. On 
hot days the Yankee walks through the streets with his 
coat off; in automobiles he appears in his shirt sleeves; 
in the parks everybody sits on the ground without coat 
and vest, and even with their shirts open. On the lake 
shore young couples are seen in bathing suits seated 
together. 

In one of my previous letters I mentioned the word 
lynchmg as of genuine Yankee manufacture. There is 
another word which this nation has contributed to the 
vocabulary of all languages: ''bluff." Hence our word 
^^hlufear." Here everything is "the biggest in the 
world," ''the most beautiful in the world," "the most 
expensive in the world." The Chicago newspaper that 
I generally read is called "The Chicago Tribune," and 
under the title it has this sub-title : ' ' The Largest News- 
paper In The World," which, of course, is not true, 
but so that none may surpass it, it publishes on one of 
its pages a small caricature section in the form of a 
newspaper and calls it ' ' The Smallest Newspaper in the 
World." 

Everybody here brags about what they are doing. 
For instance, a Liberty Loan campaign is launched. 
The government orders millions of buttons ; one is given 
to everybody who buys a bond and they pin it on their 
coat lapel, like a medal. To have bought the bond is 
not sufficient for them, they must brag about it, they 
must boast, they must show that they have bought their 
bond. The Red Cross launches a campaign and, of 
course, distributes paper banners, so that every one who 
gives a dollar can put one in his window. If in a house 



EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 211 

there is one person who has given a dollar to the Red 
Cross, one cross is gummed to the window-pane; if two 
persons have each given a dollar, two crosses are pasted 
in the window, and so on. In some of these windows I 
saw, alongside two or three crosses, the sign ''100%," 
and when I asked what this stood for, I was told that 
it meant that every one in the house had given a dollar. 
For the families of those who have gone to war they 
have invented what is called "a service flag" on which 
a red star is depicted for each man in the family who 
has gone to war and a golden star for each man who has 
died in the service of the country. Windows display 
these flags to acquaint each passerby with the fact that 
a member of the family has gone to the war; they are 
also carried on automobiles. Not long ago I saw the 
window of a private house converted into a show-case 
like those in shops. In it were exhibited not only the 
service flag, but the letters that the young man of the 
house had sent, postal packages and a German helmet 
that he had captured from the Prussians. 

I cannot think what they do in the schools of this 
country, since no culture or manners are taught. Their 
only object appears to be that of preparing the in- 
dividual to make the dollar: aggressiveness in business. 
On no account would I consent to have my children 
educated here. 

I do not know the schools, colleges and universities 
of this country, except by their outside appearance, by 
their buildings, which are generally magnificent. But 
if I may judge by their produce, I think we have nothing 
to envy in the American educational system. 

There is, however, an aspect which revolted me from 
the first moment I saw the pupils coming from schools, 



212 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

whether it be an elementary or high-school; I mean co- 
education. Boys and girls not only attend the same 
school, but they attend the same classes and sit on the 
same benches. 
'^ This promiscuity of the sexes in schools robs woman 
of her charm, it makes her masculine. Hence the reason 
why woman in this country has acquired so many 
features that are exclusively masculine elsewhere. In 
almost all homes the men get up from the table after 
dinner to wash the dishes and to occupy themselves with 
other domestic details exclusively feminine. To see men 
in the parks wheeling a perambulator, or carrying the 
baby in their arms while the wife walks at their side 
carrying the dog, is a common scene in the cities of 
this country. Of course you know that a servant here is 
almost a rara avis, and that the owner of an automobile 
can seldom afford to keep a chauffeur. 

It being impossible to have a servant, man is one in 
this "womanocracy." 

Man here occupies an inferior position. In other 
countries the question is discussed as to whether a 
woman is intellectually man's equal. Not here, where 
this controversy is old already. The question discussed 
here now is whether man is intellectually on a level with 
woman. The following joke, which illustrates this point 
of view in American life, I read the other day in a 
newspaper : 

Professor Phirstboy prided himself upon his advanced 
and enlightened views concerning women and their place 
in the scheme of things: 

He sat next to a very clever woman at a little dinner 
the other night, and in reply to a remark of hers ex- 
claimed : 



EDUCATION, CHABACTEB AND HABITS 213 

"My dear ladj^, I go further than believing in woman 
suffrage; I maintain that man and woman are equal in 
every way." 

''Oh, professor!" said the lady very sweetly; ''now 
you flatter yourself." 

Of course. Just imagine the bold professor placing 
himself on a level with woman. 

This difference in habits extends to all the aspects of 
life. The menu of the Yankee house is simply unbear- 
able for us. They eat stuffed turkey with cranberry 
sauce; I have been served in hotels with artichokes 
cooked in cinnamon; they put sugar on lettuce and to- 
matoes; and all the rest in the same style. 

This difference in the way of living is extended to the 
houses themselves. Very often there can be seen in 
the windows of the restaurants here a compact pile of 
unopened oysters with large pieces of ice on top and 
underneath. That, I think, is a symbol of a Yankee 
city. The men are piled up, one on the other, in their 
enormous houses, with a room for each family, like 
oysters in calcareous shells, without any of them having 
relations with their neighbors or knowing anything 
about them. Even the ice is a symbol: a Yankee city 
is a refrigerator, the souls are frozen. 
• Here they are determined to do away with prostitu- 
tion, and the traffic is illegal in nearly all States of the 
Union. This constitutes a radical departure from the 
wise traditions of continental Europe, adopted in our 
country and in all Latin America. 

Particularly in Chicago a pitiless campaign is being 
waged against women of easy virtue. A young country- 
man of ours told me how, when walking one day in 
Michigan Avenue, a fairly good looking girl eyed hink 



214 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

suggestively. He reciprocated the look and invited her 
to take something at a restaurant, as if he were on a 
Paris Boulevard. The girl accepted, and after supper he 
asked her to accompany him to a hotel. This invitation 
was also accepted by the young woman, but no sooner 
were they alone in the room when she showed him her 
detective's badge and marched him off to prison, from 
which he escaped only on payment of a fine for having 
encouraged prostitution. Did you ever see such a 
thing? Male detectives are also on the watch for girls 
guilty of the same misdemeanor. 

They do not understand here that legalized prostitu- 
tion is a necessary evil, tolerated for the purpose of 
abating a much greater evil: the furtive prostitution of 
the home, of the daughter of honorable parents, who 
runs the risk of seduction by the beast that is in man, 
and which they think here can be curbed in defiance of 
the law of nature. 

This is another world and certainly not a superior one. 
It is a world eminently inferior. Here one does not live 
— one exists. I do not know what grounds Latin Ameri- 
can admirers of this country have for praising this coun- 
try at the expense of our own countries. The following 
is by an Argentine, Alfredo Colmo, taken from his book, 
*'The Countries of Latin America," and cited by Pro- 
fessor William R. Shepherd, professor at Columbia 
University : 

"What has the United States in common with the 
countries of Latin America ? Very little : the incidental 
fact of its geographical location in the same hemisphere> 
and the external circumstance that it became independ- 
ent at almost the same time. . . . What, then, does it 
offer by way of unlikeness? Nearly everything, and in 



, EDUCATION, CEABACTEB AND HABITS 215 

terms so disparate that they are but little less than 
diametrically the opposite of one another. Details and 
secondary matters apart, the contrasts, in which those 
countries never hold the place of vantage, are the fol- 
lowing: populousness and uninhabitedness ; wealth and 
misery; deeds and words; activity and atrophy; educa- 
tion and inculture ; industry and politicalism ; commerce 
and militarism; order and impulsiveness; legality and 
defiance of law; free will and arbitrariness; morality 
and egotism; truth and falsehood; principles and men; 
railways and mules ; civilization and stagnation and even 
barbarism; liberty and slavery, etc." 

These are the words of Senor Colmo, and they are 
surely the limit. Writers are needed who will defend 
Latin America instead of reviling it. Do people travel 
on mules from Santiago to Buenos Aires or on a railroad 
as modern as thai from Chicago to New York? Have 
we not erected high upon the Andes a Christ at whose 
feet we tell the world that the Andes mountains will first 
crumble before the peace can be broken between the 
great countries that the mountain range separates? Is 
not Buenos Aires growing more rapidly than New York ? 
Have we not writers, sculptors and musicians greater 
than those of the United States? 

I know not why we have taken into our head lately to 
send our teachers to this country to look for inspiration 
from the Yankee methods of education. We have noth- 
ing to learn here and we could certainly teach them a 
great deal. Our natural bond of union is with Europe. 
Thence our politicians, our writers and our artists drew 
their inspiration. There is nothing more opposed to 
our idiosyncrasy than the idiosyncrasy of the Yankee 



216 TEE GULF OF 3IISUNDEBSTANDING 

and it is absurd for us to pretend to learn their methods 
of educating the future generations. 



Your husband who adores you. 



The perusal of this letter angered Miss Jones for half 
an hour. Her first impulse was to reply with heat, but 
true to her conviction that a calm statement of her case 
would best serve her purpose, she held the insulting 
letter over until the following day, when her comments 
took form in these words: 

Madam : 

Your husband is shocked at finding in general very 
little culture among the persons with whom it has fallen 
to his lot to associate in our country. 

It happens that your husband himself, who is eminent 
in your country, who has had a careful University 
education, who has traveled in Europe, who has de- 
voted a gi'eat deal of time to reading in foreign lan- 
guages, and who possesses a more than ordinary general 
culture, will naturally not often find people who have 
the same degree of culture as he. I even agree that it 
would be easier for him to find in Chile, your country, 
persons of high culture than in my country. The 
reason is very simple: there he has his circle of intel- 
lectual friends, of choice minds with which he is in 
daily contact; here he meets at random with all kinds 
of people. There he is in his own atmosphere; here he 



EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 217 

is transplanted. Very often the manager of a bank with 
whom one talks at a dinner may have been during all 
his early youth a humble worker to whom the exceptional 
opportunities that our democracy offers suffice to enable 
him to overcome economic difficulties, specializing his 
I studies in the line he needed most for his advancement. 

In your country, madam, as in all Latin America, 
there is a small number of persons who are very cul- 
tured, but there is an immense mass of the population 
quite uneducated, and when speaking of the culture of a 
country we must do so in just the same way as when 
speaking of its wealth. In the latter case not only 
are the millions of the millionaires counted, but also 
the cents of the poor; the sum total of wealth is 
estimated. Considering things in this way — which is 
the only right way to discuss them w^hen treating of 
democracies — it cannot be denied that the culture of 
the United States is enormously superior to that of 
Latin America. / 

On the other hand, your husband, being a Chilean, 
is astonished at the ignorance of the people with whom 
he speaks regarding the geography of his country; but, 
do you think that your countrymen are very familiar 
with the geography of the world? Do you think that 
I could not name for you, and other Latin Americans, 
•cities with a population of half a million of which you 
have not even heard? Has not the news of the world 
war shown us all our supreme ignorance of the world's 
geography ? 

The truth is, that man all over the world is still pro- 
foundly ignorant of things that he does not see, that he 
does not smell and that he does not touch. The things 
he sees, smells and touches he knows more or less well, 



218 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

and when he leaves his environment he is astonished 
that men who live in other surroundings are not familiar 
with the things that he knows from childhood. We na- 
tions live in a shell, like the oyster. The ignorance of 
Latin America about our countiy is as supine as our 
ignorance about Latin America. 

However, there is a world of difference between this 
last statement and admitting that superficiality is the 
dominant note in our country. I do not want to make 
offensive comparisons with Latin America, but the indi- 
cations are all thatfwords mean there more than ideas, 
form more than things. , Our universities are serving as 
a model of inspiration to Europe. The intellectual pro- 
duction of our present university professors is of in- 
estimable importance. In no country of the world has 
the national task of study, in all its branches, been 
taken care of with more ardor than in my country. 

In no country are there so many libraries as here. 
Between the years 1775 and 1800 there were thirty 
public libraries in my country; between 1800 and 1825 
there were one hundred and seventy-nine ; between 1825 
and 1850 there were five hundred and fifty-one ; between 
1850 and 1875 there were twenty-two thousand and 
forty. To-day it can truly be said that there is no one in 
the United States who does not live near some library. 
And these libraries have each day more and more read- 
ers, and each day sees an increase in the number of 
serious books, not novels, circulated by them. 

My country also has a real national institution in its 
open forums where public lectures are given, generally 
with the right of free discussion; and statistics tell us 
that each year one person out of eleven of our popula- 



EDUCATION, CHABACTEB AND HABITS 219 

tion attends these lectures where all the vital problems 
of the day are discussed. 

It is true that our country has not produced literary 
geniuses of the caliber of Shakespeare, Cervantes, 
Moliere or Dante. Neither has Latin America. I think 
that this is because each of the two continents has a 
literature which is a branch of that of the mother 
country and which has not as yet become perfectly ripe. 
Neither have Canada and Australia produced literary 
geniuses who have dazzled the world ; but it would have 
been enough for your husband to have brought to mind 
the figures of William James, Emerson, Whittier or 
Whitman, to have made it impossible for him to say 
that Rodin would not have been able to find here a 
model for his Thinker. 

However, I must admit that in your institutions of 
secondary education wider general instruction is given 
than in ours. You impart more knowledge; you fill 
the pupils' heads with more data, you know more about 
world history ; and when I say you, I refer to the small 
part of the population that attends school. /TWe have 
put more emphasis in the formation of character. Our 
schools give an education ; yours give instruction. There 
word has been deified; here action has been deified^ 

As for our exaggerated love of sport: the baseball 
game which your husband saw in Chicago was a con- 
test quite naturally exciting the enthusiasm he de- 
scribed, because it was played in order to establish who 
were the champions of the country. We have a love 
for sport of all kinds and, in my opinion, this partiality 
is a virtue rather than a vice, whatever may be the ex- 
tremes of enthusiasm and delight to which the meeting 
of the champions lead the people. There is something 



220 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

finer in that baseball game than in a bull fight or in a 
horse race where fortunes are at stake. Sport, the edu- 
cation of the animal in man, is a part of our program 
of national education. 

Have we not the social refinement to which your hus- 
band is accustomed? Are we uncouth in our manners? 
Of course, I believe that there are very many people in 
my country as refined as the most exclusive society of 
Latin America; but I must admit also that in the so- 
called upper classes persons of bad manners are found, 
which is rarely the case among the privileged classes in 
the countries of Latin America. 

Why? For a very simple reason more to our credit 
than to our disrepute. I picture your husband, madam, 
as the prototype of the well bred man of savoir faire 
and distinguished and exquisite refinement. He learned 
that from the cradle, he inherited it from his father, 
from his grandfather and his great-grandfather, and 
he passes it on to his children, grandchildren and great- 
grandchildren. There is hardly any interchange in the 
social layers. The rich and distinguished man of to- 
day is the sou, grandson and great-grandson of rich 
and distinguished men of the past. 

You will agree with me, however, that leaving those 
privileged classes and descending in the social scale 
until we reach the laundress, the bricklayer and the 
day-laborer, the manners we find are very different. 
If there existed in your country the facilities enjoyed 
in mine for the poor to obtain the best economic and 
social positions, you would discover that refinement, 
distinction in manners and aristocracy of movements 
would not be a characteristic feature among all people 
of the upper classes. 



EDUCATION, CHABACTEB AND HABITS 221 

It is this stability of caste in the countries of Latin 
"America, and the unrestricted field for the advance- 
ment 0? competence in the ranks of our democracy, 
Which accounts for the fact that there aristocracy has a 
stamp of distinction, while here the man of good educa- 
tion can le seen side by side with the unpolished man 
who has succeeded economically and socially. 

That the man of my country is discourteous towards 
Woman I do not believe. Your husband should not 
confound our habits of business life with our habits 
of social life. The American does not remove his hat 
in the elevator of an office building, even if there are 
ladies present, but he uncovers in the elevator of a 
hotel. 

I have always heard, madam, this accusation made 
by Latin Americans and Europeans that our men are not 
very gentlemanly or courteous towards women. In 
these notes to the letters of your husband, madam, 
I have made an effort to appear as little chauvinisie 
as possible, but now I cannot resist the impulse of say- 
ing that the man of my country is the most courteous 
in the world, the most gentlemanly towards women. 

Your husband makes fun of the husband who wheels 
a perambulator through our streets or who carries his 
child. In the countries of Latin America I have noted 
that the suitor always carries the parcels of his be- 
trothed when walking together, but I did not always see 
the husband carrying his wife's packages. 

Is it not true courtesy for a husband to help his wife 
in housework when there is no servant in the house ? Is 
it only courteous to say: ''Pardon me, madam. I am 
delighted to make your acquaintance ? ' ' Should courtesy 
be expressed by words or by actions ? 



222 THE GVLP OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Does your husband also lay to the debit in the trial 
balance of our progress the fact that it is difficidt to 
keep a servant among us ? Why is it difficult ? Doubt- 
less in some cities of Latin America a person who earns 
one hundred dollars monthly can have two servants in 
his house, and one who earns two hundred dollars a 
month can have four. Why? Because the labor of 
servants is cheap. And why is it cheap? Because of 
the backwardness of those countries. In some cities of 
Latin America a servant can be employed for a dollar a 
month. But, thank God, this will not always be so ; some 
day there will not be in Latin America a single woman 
whose work will be remunerated at the rate of only one 
dollar a month. 

Madam, your husband describes to you in detail the 
whole scene of the baseball game between the White 
Sox and the Giants in Chicago which it fell to his lot 
to witness. Allow me to describe to you in detail another 
scene that I was privileged to witness, where those base- 
ball players, virile, sound in body and soul, gave proof 
that the potency of the muscle is not at variance with 
the highest form of courtesy. I am going to describe to 
you a scene that I was fated to witness and which will 
never be effaced from my memory. 

It was on the high seas, in the Titanic^ a powerful 
transatlantic steamer, the sinking of which was doubt- 
less brought to your notice at the time. 

The largest ship in the world has hurled itself at 
midnight against a mountain of ice while the last notes 
of a waltz are still vibrating in the saloons, when the 
ladies have not yet discarded their silk dresses nor the 
men their dress-coats. The steamer has called for 
help from all the ships within its wireless zone; but 



EDUCATION, CHABACTEB AND HABITS 223 

there is no time to wait on deck until they come, 
because the ship may at any moment dive to the utter- 
most depths of the abyss. There are hardly enough 
boats to save one out of every six of the crew. The wa- 
ter overwhelms the dynamos and all lights are extin- 
guished. Communication with the outside world has 
ceased; the Hertzian weaves carry no more messages. 
Feeble minds become deranged, but in the midst of this 
confusion and panic there is something clear, something 
which shines as a light; it is a cry heard on all sides, 
a voice in command, an Anglo-Saxon mandate that waves 
like a flag, the supreme touch of courtesy: ^'SAVE 
THE WOMEN FIRST !" 

That order is obej^ed; the scanty places in the few 
boats are to be filled with the women and children on 
board. The wife descends, followed by her maid, not 
by her husband. 

Astor, the millionaire, leads his wife, who is soon to 
become a mother, to the lifeboat ; he asks the officers for 
permission to accompany and protect her, but they an- 
swer no, not while a woman remains to be saved. The 
master of five hundred millions, clad in his dress-clothes, 
meekly obeys, steps back and makes way for a woman 
immigrant, a barefooted Syrian woman, who obtains 
precedence because she is a woman. Astor lights a 
cigarette and says good-by, waving his hand to the boat 
in which departs his wife, young, beautiful, adored, 
while he, smiling, remains behind awaiting death. 

The wife of Straus, another millionaire, refuses to 
enter the lifeboat unless her old husband comes, too. 
The officers request the old man to go, both because of his 
advanced age and because it is the only way to save his 
wife. The octogenarian replies: *'I am old, but you 



224 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

cannot take away my prerogative of being a man." So 
both husband and wife perish, after taking care that 
their servant is saved. 

Practically all the women and children are saved, 
with the exception of the wives who would not abandon 
their husbands, preferring to die with them, it being 
impossible for any human force to drag them away. 
The women and children of the steerage are also saved, 
while the magnates and millionaries die like heroes, 
standing, as the men of the ship's band, knowing they 
have only a few minutes to live, fill the air with stirring 
music. 

One individual, overcome by panic, loses his presence 
of mind and tries to save himself; but Major Butt, of 
the United States army, with the roughness of the base- 
ball player, catches him by the arm and throws him 
(Stunned to the deck. 

*'I am sorry," says the stern soldier, *'but the last 
woman in the steerage must leave the ship before you." 

Some Chinese coolies save themselves in the darkness 
by gliding, crawling like snakes. An Italian conceives 
the idea of saving his life and losing his honor ; he dons 
some of his wife 's clothes and descends at her side. The 
semidarkness protects the fraud, the men make way for 
him and aid him to the lifeboat. If he had put on a 
king's crown or the insignia of a multi-millionaire he 
would not have attained his object, because the voice 
of command was: women first; even the ragged immi- 
grants; after them the men, even the magnates and 
millionaires. 

Many of the latter enter the boats to take leave of 
their wives and return to the ship, which they know will 
be their tomb. 



EDUCATION, CH ABAC TEE AND HABITS 225 

Guggenheim remains on deck, which attracts brave 
men as an electric light attracts butterflies. He 
writes home a few lines : ' ' If anything happens to me, 
tell my wife that I have tried my best to do my duty." 

In one boat seven women are saved who are return- 
ing from their honeymoon, while the orange blossoms 
with which they w^nt to the altar have not yet withered. 
Their husbands, when leaving them in safety while they 
remain to die, are not perturbed; with a princely smile 
they seem to add a final courtesy to their sweet bonds of 
love. 

The women of the steerage who have been saved say 
that the gentlemen in evening dress took off their life- 
belts and tendered them like courtiers who offer flowers 
to a queen. 

Miss Edith Evans gives up the last seat in the last 
boat to one of her friends and remains behind to die, 
saying these words that would have shaken Sparta : 

' ' You have children. ' ' 

At times it still seems to me that I am in that boat in 
which thirty of us women were saved, and think I hear 
the voices of the shipwrecked in the distance. So long 
as the boat w^as able to hold more, we picked up every- 
body we could ; but soon we had so many in it that any 
added weight would imperil the lives of us all. An 
old man swam towards us. He grabbed hold of our 
boat; but he was told that if he tried to climb in we 
should all sink. The man answered quietly: 

' ' Very well ; you are right. May God bless you, ' ' and 
he drifted away from the boat, going to die like an un- 
known hero under the waves cold as the pole. 

The sun of the following morning lit up that sea in 



226 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

which hundreds of gentlemen had perished so that the 
gallantry of the men of our race might not perish. 

And this tragic scene that I have described to you, 
madam, is one page in a book of thousands of pages 
that could be written to define the courtesy of our 
men for us. 

Our national education forms the character of the 
individual; it teaches habits that have already been 
partly converted into racial features, and these habits 
are sterling qualities of our race. 

If we have produced the word "bluff," almost un- 
translatable into Spanish, as your husband says, we 
have also produced other words, such as "a square deal" 
and ''fair play," which are a product of our education 
and which are even more difficult to translate into Span- 
ish than the word ''bluff." From this circumstance I 
should not infer, madam, that "fair play" and "square 
deal" do not exist in your countries. 

"Bluff," as a national feature, is something inherent 
to all countries that have attained great success in 
their collective lives. It existed among the Romans. 
On its coins and stamps France has pictured the French 
Republic as sowing the seeds of civilization in the world. 
Germany coined the world-known phrase: ^'Deutschland 
ueher Alles/' ^^Chauvinisme'' is a French word; 
"jingoism" is English. 

I do not believe, however, that hluff is a character- 
istic feature of our country. Bluff, of a collective na- 
ture, is closely associated with clannishness and is com- 
mon to every country, to every State, to every province, 
to every city, to every political party, to every organiza- 
tion and to every school ; it is the spirit of exhibiting all 
those things which are an honor to the group to which 



EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 227 

one belongs, and, of course, the noise that is made by 
the one who has the most things to boast of attracts 
most of the world's attention. It is not that I am 
here defending Muff; I am explaining it. 

Your husband speaks of the buttons that the buyer 
of a Liberty Bond exhibits on his coat lapel, of the 
service flag and of the Red Cross insignia. These ex- 
hibitions are made principally as a means of propaganda, 
as a mode of emulation for one's neighbor, or just for 
convenience, so that solicitors may not lose time. We 
have not the craze for orders, so prevalent in Europe. 
I have read that in France, some time ago, a strike of 
postmen for an increase in salary was settled by the 
promise that the Government, unwilling to grant the 
increase asked for, would award a medal to every post- 
man. That would be impossible in my country. More- 
over, neither is Latin America free from this reverence 
for orders of chivalry. When President Manuel Estrada 
Cabrera of Guatemala received from the French Gov- 
ernment the decoration of a Grand Officer of the Legion 
of Honor, he immediately decreed that the day on which 
he received this honor should be a legal holiday for 
the whole country. 

We do not believe, madam, that legalized prostitu- 
tion is a suitable defense for the honor of our home 
life. On the contrary, legalized prostitution is a school 
for vicious men, who spread their vice beyond the ''red 
light" district. 

Nor do we believe it to be i^ight that the state 
should recognize the profession of a class of women 
as slaves of vice in order to defend other women in 
their innocence. To the state the purity of the woman 



228 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

highly placed is as sacred, and not more so, than that of 
the woman born in a lower stratum of society. 

"We differ from Latin America and continental Europe 
in our way of facing this problem because the countries 
of which these continents consist are autocracies, whereas 
we are a democracy. Over there they do not scruple 
to sacrifice women of the poorer classes so that they 
shall serve as instruments of pleasure for the upper 
classes, under the fictitious pretext of defending the 
virtue of the privileged classes. Here we think that 
the virtue of the poor is also worthy of defense. 

If I were asked what is the predominant feature of our 
national character, I should answer, without hesitation: 
the spirit of service. 

I remember that when on my travels through Latin 
America I was walking along the streets of a city, I 
noticed how a woman peddling fruit overturned a basket 
containing peaches, plums and apples. I hastened to 
assist her in picking up the fruit ; but she, never suppos- 
ing that a lady would bend down to help her, was more 
easily inclined to suspect that I wished to deprive her 
of her fruit, and exclaimed angrily: 

*' Leave that alone, it belongs to me." 

In our country the spirit of service is the soul of 
the nation. I do not think that there is anybody here 
who is not directly united with some service association. 
]\Iany make their spirit of serving the moving principle 
of their lives. 

Now this good will to serve others is, in my opinion, 
the supreme manifestation of courtesy. It was the 
spirit of service that induced my country to go to war, 
raising an army of six million men and spending thirty 
billion dollars, to help their brothers in democracy. 



EDUCATION, CHARACTER AND HABITS 229 

I think that the famous Argentine writer quoted by 
your husband exaggerates when belittling South Amer- 
ica. That is a groat continent with a wonderful future ; 
but it will attain its future triumphs by recognizing the 
virtues of others and by trying to take advantage of 
everj^thing suitable without destroying its own tempera- 
ment and idiosyncrasy. 

With affectionate regards, 

From your Friend of the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER XI 

PAN AMERICANISM 

MISS JONES thought that the Chicago corre- 
spondent had at last exhausted the fury of his 
indictment against the country which sheltered 
him, when this new letter, a corollary of all the previous 
ones, arrived at her office : 

Chicago, lU.j 1918. 

My dearest : 



After all I have told you about this country, after 
having shown you that this people is entirely different 
to us in ideals, education, character and manners, to 
the extreme of being antagonistic, one cannot help 
feeling surprised that the peoples of Latin America 
should regard with pleasure this new doctrine so much 
in vogue nowadays in the new continent; I mean, Pan 
Americanism. 

What is Pan Americanism? The union of the two 
Americas, the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon. What is 
this union for? We have nothing in common: neither 
interests nor ideals. Is it because we are near each 
other? Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil are 
nearer to Europe than to the United States. Europe 
sells us her goods cheaper, which is quite natural since 
the workmen here are asking double wages every month ; 

230 



PAN AMERICANISM 231 

Europe buys more from us than does the United States ; 
Europe gives us her ideals, her literature; Europe is 
the source of all culture, and we should drink from 
the original source, not where the river flows into the sea 
with all the, refuse it has brought with it on its way. 

The commercial contact of the two Americas is harm- 
ful for Latin America, for it is an established social law 
that when two civilizations, one more developed in a 
material way than the other, come into contact, the 
more developed people tyrannize over the less de- 
veloped people, and the latter become satellites of the 
former's empire. 

Some carry their Pan Americanism so far as to pro- 
pose that all the countries of America should join in a 
Z Oliver ein^ which means that we should allow the manu- 
factures of the United States to enter free of duty, and 
that this country should receive our produce under the 
3ame conditions. 

With childlike candor they want us to agree to the 
offer made in the stable by the hen to the horse: 

The hen pecked the oats which fell from the horse's 
manger, and was kept on the hop to avoid the feet of 
the noble charger which paid no attention to the con- 
venience of the humble fowl. 
• One day the hen said philosophically to the horse: 

**Mr. Horse, I have something to propose to you. 
If you will promise not to tread on me, I promise not 
to tread on you. ' ' 

This is what Pan Americanism means: You, Latin 
America, may send us your natural produce, which we 
shall allow to enter our ports free of duty; and we 
Americans shall send you our pianos, our automobiles, 
our typewriters also duty free. We may forgive the 



232 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

hen for not taking into consideration that her foot- 
steps do not hurt the horse; but we cannot forgive 
the United States for making us this offer knowing that 
we are not manufacturing countries, while in sending 
them our raw material, such as coal, iron, copper, wood 
and cotton, they reap the benefit by returning them to 
us in the form of manufactured goods. 

One of the most intelligent sociologists of the United 
States, Josiali Strong, in one of his books, follows the 
argument of Professor Drummond, who, in his work 
''The Ascent of Man," maintains that when men be- 
came sufficiently intelligent to invent a tool the evo- 
lutionary development of the hand ceased. 

He tells us that the more we gave the hand to do 
the better it became adapted to its work. The hand 
continued in its development to adapt itself to all 
work required of it. But the fatal day came (fatal for 
the development of the hand) when man invented the 
first tools. Thereupon, what the hand did and learned 
to do better every time began to be done by auxiliary 
tools; so that the new things that had to be made 
brought about no further perfection of the hand, but 
rather a new tool or the improvement of those already 
in use. Tools are the prolongation of the hands; levels 
do the work which the forearm did before. Hammers 
are substitutes for the fist ; knives do well what the 
nails did imperfectly; pliers are the fingers. The day 
when the cave-man made his first tool, the evolution of 
the hand stopped. In the course of the successive ages 
the hand might have arrived at a stage of develop- 
ment where many things which cannot now be made 
without tools could have been made by the hand alone. 

Something analogous to the foregoing, continues Mr. 



PAN AMERICANISM 233 

Strong, may be applied to backward races when placed 
in touch with advanced races. The manufacturing coun- 
tries take the place of the tools with regard to the hand, 
which here represents the backward countries ; and from 
the moment when the manufacturing countries begin to 
supply goods to the backward countries, they hold up 
their industrial development. 

All this was said by Mr. Strong to establish the fact 
that the industrial future of the United States is im- 
mense and that it need not be feared that the backward 
markets of Latin America will be able to supply them- 
selves from their own resources. 

The maiden seeks fragrance and beauty in the flower, 
the bee and the humming bird their daily food. We 
ourselves see in Latin America the cradle of our life, 
the couch of our dreams, all that is most sacred and 
most dear; the sons of this other America see here a 
market. Just as smoke is associated with fire, gloves 
with the hand and shoes with the feet, so the Yankee 
thinks of Latin America as a market for his produce. 

I have never seen a Yankee paper in which the ' ' end- 
less opportunities of the Latin American market" are 
not spoken of. Public lectures are held day after day 
to boost the trade opportunities of Latin America. Every 
month new magazines in Spanish appear, which are 
nothing else than a means of commercial penetration, 
with hundreds of pages of advertisements in which the 
excellence of their chewing gum and their patent medi- 
cines are proclaimed. 

The religious campaigns of evangelical propaganda, 
which count upon the help of business men who give 
liberally to ''evangelize" Latin America, are really 
only another means of trade penetration. Inter- Ameri- 



234 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

can conferences and congresses are also nothing but 
means of commercial penetration in Latin America. 
We joyfully welcome these peals of the Pan American 
bells, without thinking that we are only giving away 
part of our sovereignty by so doing. 

Pan Americanism is the bridal robe, decked with 
immaculate orange blossoms, with which the colossal 
campaign for the commercial conquest of Latin America 
by the United States is covered. But this is not a 
bride who wishes to marry for love, but for interest. 

A great reception, with banquets and speeches, is 
given to all eminent Latin Americans who visit this 
country. There is in New York a "Pan American So- 
ciety" to which belong the great merchants, manu- 
facturers and bankers who do business with Latin 
America. The purpose of this society is to offer ban- 
quets to representative men of Latin America who visit 
New York. There are many business houses in this 
country which maintain an official staff intrusted with 
the social entertainment of their clients at the expense 
of the firm. They know well that these extra attentions 
bring orders for goods. This Pan American Society 
takes the place of such a diplomatic staff employed 
by the big exporters; it is a commercial bait. 

The foregoing does not constitute anything dishon- 
orable. It is legitimate that the United States should 
use all honest means within its reach in order to sell as 
much as possible to our countries; but I object to the 
campaigns disguised with the incense of Pan American- 
ism, for here the interested parties make believe that 
Pan Americanism means the union of both Americas, 
the better understanding between both Americas, mutual 
help between the two Americas, whereas it really stands 



PAN AMERICANISM 235 

for nothing else than the commercial conquest of Latin 
America by the United States. 

To show yon that I am right in what I say, I will 
cite the case of the Pan American Congress which was 
held at our capital. The American delegates to the 
Congress were sociologists, statisticians and diplomatists, 
who came with the intention of exploring new markets 
for their country. One of them was Archibald Cary 
Coolidge, who is author of the book entitled: "The 
United States as a World Power." After showing in 
this book that the United States, looking round the 
world, have seen that Asia and Africa are monopolized 
by European countries, which, like France in Madagas- 
car, have taken from them all the markets, Cary Coo- 
lidge says that "there remained, however, two regions 
where the Americans believed they saw splendid pos- 
sibilities for the future. But to make the most of these 
possibilities they must take decided action. In the re- 
publics of Latin America there was no highly developed 
native industry to be feared as a rival. There was noth- 
ing but the competition of Europe, which had too long 
had the field to itself, and the Americans were con- 
vinced that they could meet this competition victo- 
riously if only they made the best of their natural ad- 
vantages. A first step was to draw closer to these fel- 
low-republicans to the South, for the benefit of all con- 
cerned. This led to the policy known as Pan American- 
ism. . . . ' ' 

"The manufacturing industries of the United States,'' 
he says further on, "have developed, and are develop- 
ing, at such a rate that the Americans are not afraid 
to meet their European rivals in almost any branch of 
trade. It was to be expected that they should turn their 



236 TEE GULF OF 3IISUNDEFSTANDING 

gaze to the southern half of their own hemisphere, 
where, as yet, they are only beginning to get a good 
commercial footing, but where the future appears to 
offer them golden opportunities. ^Vhy should the 
American merchant leave this splendid field to be ex- 
ploited by the Englishman or the Germans? Is it not 
the plain duty of his government to aid and encourage 
his enterprise in every possible way?" 

**In South America," he adds elsewhere, **the Ger- 
mans are convinced that they have found a field of splen- 
did possibilities, and their progress in recent years has 
been startling in its rapidity ; but to South America the 
Americans are turning much of their attention, and with 
the aid of Pan American sentiment, they hope to win 
the first place for themselves." 

The United States sent men of this caliber, men who 
think in this way, to form part of the Pan American 
Scientific Congress in our country. And in spite of 
everything we have allowed ourselves to be duped. 

Here they have made of the Bible an adequate text 
for the foundation of hundreds of religions, each of 
which interprets the Holy Scriptures in its own way. 
The same applies to Pan Americanism: to the vendor 
of shoes it means that Latin America buys his foot- 
wear; to the maker of locomotives it means that Latin 
America buys his engines. That is all. 

Since the whole problem of Pan Americanism is a 
question of commercial relations, it presents itself to us 
in this form: Does it suit us better to make our com- 
mercial relations closer with the United States or with 
Europe ? 

I believe that closer relations with the United States 
are undesirable because this country is too absorbing 



PAN AMERICANISM 237 

and has tlie tendency to get our natural resources en- 
tirely into its power. For instance, in doing a fruit 
business with Central America they have not been satis- 
fied with the business of buying and selling, but have 
extended their operations to the purchase of the planta- 
tions. The same applies to the iron and copper of Chile, 
to the copper and petroleum of Mexico and to the frozen 
meat of Uruguay and Argentina. 

We are responsible for this, as I also am myself, since 
I am in treaty to sell them my copper deposits, a fact 
which does not fail to lie hea-v^ on my conscience. 

The most serious matter, however, is that the Yankee 
is persuaded that his flag must follow his business, and 
having manifold interests in Latin America, he is in- 
clined to meddle with its internal politics. Nowadays, 
a President for IMexico or for any country of Central 
America cannot be elected without the consent of the 
White House, which is for us the Black House. Ac- 
cording to the measure by which their business extends 
towards the South their political influence will also be 
extended, and some day they will be dictating our eco- 
nomical policy from the Rio Grande to the Straits of 
Magellan. 

Nothing of this kind occurs with regard to our inter- 
change of business with Europe, and therefore we should 
prefer to encourage our commercial relations with Eng- 
land, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Belgium. On 
the other hand, it is our duty to oppose the doctrine of 
Pan Americanism with that of Ibero-Americanism. 
There are more interests in common between Chile and 
Uruguay, between Argentine and Colombia and be- 
tween Mexico and Peru than between any of our repub- 
lics and the United States. The extraordinary growth 



238 THE GULF OF 3IISUNDEBSTANDIN0 

of this country during the nineteenth century will be ex- 
celled by the growth and development of Latin Amer- 
ica in the twentieth century. Ours is the continent of 
the future. We have had the good fortune to inherit a 
continent with vaster natural resources than any other, 
and we shall occupy a conspicuous place in history when 
we are able to harvest the accumulated patrimony of 
material, intellectual and moral treasure derived from 
twenty centuries of Christian civilization. Old Europe 
yields us already solved all the most transcendental 
problems of mankind. For Latin America is the task 
of observing, choosing and applying them, according to 
her idiosyncrasy and her temperament. 

The New World will have an Anglo-Saxon civiliza- 
tion in the North and a Spanish-American civilization 
in the South. Of a truth these civilizations will be an- 
tagonistic, and farseeing men of South America should 
commence to prepare their countries for the struggle to 
come by uniting them in spirit for a common purpose. 

Your affectionate husband, 



Soon after reading this letter. Miss Jones found on 
her desk a communication from the Chilean lady to her 
husband in Chicago. This was the first letter of the 
kind she had seen, which is not surprising, as it was no 
part of her duty to read the correspondence from Latin 
America; but the censor to whom the letters from San- 
tiago, Chile, were generally intrusted for examination, 
finding Miss Jones' comments on the first letter of this 
series inclosed, sent her the lady's missive for examina- 
tion. 



PAN AMERICANISM 239 

The Chilean landowner 's wife wrote almost exclusively 
of family affairs, occupying only one paragraph to tell 
her husband how interested she was in his description 
of American ideals, the more so because the censor had 
added comments to all topics he had discussed. 

Once more Miss Jones was on the point of writing to 
the Chicago correspondent, but she did not do so. She 
contented herself with writing a reply to this letter, 
just as she had done with regard to all the others, and 
she foresaw that this would be the last one which would 
require an answer. She wrote: 

Madam : 

Your husband's present letter has not astonished me 
in the least. It is the natural corollary of all the pre- 
vious ones. 

If you have tacitly accepted all he has told you with- 
out having weighed in your mind my remarks, it is but 
natural for you to look with displeasure upon the grow- 
ing spread of Pan American ideals. But if you have 
quietly meditated on my notes to your husband's letters 
and believe I am right, then you should enthusiastically 
applaud the Pan American movement, the intellectual, 
moral and material union of the two Americas. 

It is true that there are also commercial interests 
bound up in this movement ; this is one aspect of Pan 
Americanism, its material aspect. But it is not its only 
aspect, nor is it the most important. 

The history of the world shows us man in a state of 
constant moral development. This moral development 
can be measured only by the human capaeitj^ to extend 
its interest and its love from merely individual limits, 
from the love of each individual for himself, to love for 



240 THE GULF OF BIISUNDEBSTANDING 

his family, his people, his race and for mankind. The 
moral growth of the human soul is its expansion towards 
a greater and more comprehensive love. The primitive 
savage took care of himself and his children, in their 
early years. It was a great moral advance when he be- 
came interested in the well-being of his tribe. 

As man advances, his interest, his affection and his 
love expand. The present epoch shows us that a hun- 
dred million men, women and children in America took 
so seriously the happiness of men, women and children 
deprived of their rights in Old Europe, that they re- 
solved to give their peace, their money and their lives 
to defend these far-away victims. 

Societies are living organisms, but much more com- 
plex than the individuals, cells, of which they are com- 
posed. Man is an egoist in his infancy. You probably 
have noticed that your children, in their early years, are 
very selfish. This is due to the instinct of conserva- 
tion. 

Societies are still organized beings in embryo and that 
explains the collective egoism of nations ; but in propor- 
tion as a country progresses, in proportion as it has more 
confidence in itself and in its economic and moral force, 
it becomes more altruistic. The United States is to-day 
the most altruistic country in the world. Our participa- 
tion in the present war, in which we are giving our blood 
and money for justice and the well-being of others, is 
the most conclusive proof that our society is no more in 
an embryo state. 

The day seems to be dawning in which mankind is to 
have a collective conscience, is to have a soul, and in 
which the earth is going to be a single social organism, 
which cannot be injured at one extremity without the 



PAN AMERICANISM 241 

commotion and instinct of defense being felt at the 
other. 

The League of Nations that is being spoken of is the 
alphabet, that is beginning to be sketched of this new 
human condition, of this international and interconti- 
nental soul. 

And this new internationalism does not mean the 
death of nationalism, just as the constitution of nations 
did not mean the death of individualism. Furthermore, 
only those nations are strong in which the individual 
is strong, in which the family is united. The greater 
assertion of each individual, the cell of the nation, makes 
the nation itself stronger; and the greater liberty of a 
country, the greater assertion of a country, the cell of 
mankind, would make the society of nations stronger. 

But we shall arrive very slowly at this union. There 
still are principles in dispute. There are several classes 
of mankind in the world. Before having a sole con- 
glomerate on the planet, there will be several con- 
glomerates. And in the final fusion of these conglom- 
erates the strongest will prevail. 

On the fingers of one hand we can count the centuries 
of European civilization in America. Here, between the 
Atlantic and the Pacific, two continents exist into which 
Europe could fit twice over. These continents, almost 
in their entirety, claimed their right to constitute inde- 
pendent nations little more than a century ago, and a 
score of countries were born to life who adopted — in its 
general lines — an analogous constitution for their peo- 
ples, similar ideas as standards of their progress. 

For a century, however, these twenty nations have 
been isolated among themselves, isolated both materially 
and morally. Each one of them, closed up in a narrow 



242 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

national individualism, has bnsied itself vv^ith develop- 1 
ing its own moral and material entity without bothering 
much about the fate of its companions of the continent. 
And all have grown with a vertiginous rapidity. And 
they will grow with even more rapidity in the future. 

The problem has been presented to the thinkers of the 
two Americas, to the dreamers of the future, whether 
it is suitable for these countries to continue being iso- 
lated in their struggle for progress, or whether there are 
advantages in a material and spiritual union that will 
make the two Americas a conglomerate of related na- 
tions, ready to aid one another mutually in their strug- 
gle for progress. The United States has one hundred 
million inhabitants; Latin America also has one hundred 
million. At the end of the present century the two 
Americas will possibly have four hundred million in- 
habitants. Is it not of interest for the whole continent, 
for all mankind, that these Americas should have an 
analogous purpose? In the struggles of the faraway 
future, is it advisable or not that all America present a 
single front, or are there advantages in leaving these 
countries to sow to-day the seed of the discords of to- 
morrow ? 

I firmly believe that it is for the best interests of each 
one of these countries to observe a policy of close union, 
of intimate community of ideas, a policy of Pan Ameri- 
canism. 

Your husband thinks that Pan Americanism in this 
country is a drug, a patent medicine to benumb Latin 
American initiative, so that the United States may be 
able to freely develop a policy of commercial and terri- 
torial expansion in the rest of America. 

He arrives at this conclusion because Pan American- 



PAN AMEBIC ANISM 243 

ism generally goes hand in hand with the idea of inter- 
American commerce. But your husband does not take 
into account that commerce means mutual service. Our 
manufacturers and merchants do not ivy to sell to Latin 
America what Latin America does not want to buy, 
what Latin America does not need. Everything in life 
is commerce, that is: interchange, material interchange, 
intellectual interchange, moral interchange. 

And it is these three interchanges that unite countries 
more closely. The university professor, the lecturer, 
the Latin American student who comes to our universi- 
ties, the magazines in Spanish that are published here, 
carry our ideas to the countries of Latin America. The 
church and the school, and the hospital sent there by 
our missionaries are the base for our moral interchange. 
In these two instances we give and we receive ; we teach 
and we learn. The Christ that you Chileans and Ar- 
gentines have erected on the top of the Andes, is better 
known in our public schools than in yours, and its mean- 
ing is a lesson for us in international ethics. The His- 
panic Society of America is a center of Pan American 
comprehension, without any commercial aspect. 

Moreover, why not the material interchange also ? We 
.want to buy from you what you produce and we need; 
we want to sell you what we produce and you need. 
Coffee, cotton, saltpeter and sugar are needed by us, and 
you have them in excess. Our manufactured articles 
are needed by you and we produce them in excess; but 
this commerce of raw materials against manufactured 
articles — your husband says, quoting Josiah Strong — is 
going to hold back the industrial development of Latin 
America. No, madam, that is an obvious error. If 
that were true, my country would not have become an 



244 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

industrial one from the moment when it was in contact 
with industrialized Europe. 

Do not forget that the commerce of Latin America 
with my country is one of the most powerful agents 
for fostering the development of industries in those 
countries. Take, for example, the exx)ortation of ma- 
chinery to Latin America. Our machinery for making 
footwear, has it not developed the industry of footwear 
there? Our machinery for woodworking, has it not de- 
veloped the furniture industry? These examples can 
be multiplied indefinitely. 

It is an error made by many — among them Josiah 
Strong — to believe that the industrial development of 
Latin America would not be for the best interests of my 
country. The industrialized United States of the twen- 
tieth century imports much more from Europe than the 
agricultural United States of the first years of our na- 
tional life. If Latin America industrializes itself, it 
will rapidly double its population and will raise the liv- 
ing conditions of its inhabitants. Its consumption would 
multiply in geometrical proportion. A new industry 
creates others and others and others. If Latin America 
were to-day as industrialized as my country, the com- 
mercial interchange between both continents would be at 
least a hundred times greater. The above does not mean 
that Latin America should not try to foster the develop- 
ment of its favorable industries, by means of customs* 
tariffs, as we have done ourselves. 

I, madam, have no personal interest in the commercial 
interchange between my country and Latin America. 
But I believe in the advantages to be gained from this 
interchange because I know that commercial relations 
unite peoples. You in Chile have had, until lately, most 



PAN AMEBIC ANISM 245 

of your commerce with Germany and England, and a 
consequence of that commercial interchange has been 
that you have imported German teachers for your pub- 
lic schools and your army, and English officers for your 
navy. You have hardly had commercial relations with 
Spain and, in spite of its being the mother country, 
you have not looked to her for inspiration in your na- 
tional development. 

Without doubt, your husband is right when he says 
that all the Latin American republics should unite in a 
common ideal. When we speak of Pan Americanism 
we do not mean the union of each republic of the other 
America with the United States and their isolation 
among themselves. We mean the union of each Latin 
American republic with each one of the other republics 
of America; we mean the union of all the free countries 
of the whole American continent. 

But it is rash and absurd to speak of Ibero-Ameri- 
canism in opposition to Pan Americanism, to speak of 
the union of the Ibero-American republics to oppose 
the United States as a danger of the future. In the 
notes to your husband's previous letters I think I have 
shown that there is no reason to fear discords of any 
kind between the two continents, and that if some shad- 
ow is thrown on the horizon, it is our duty to make the 
sky clear by means of mutual understanding and intelli- 
gent comprehension. Europe has not solved for us all 
problems, as your husband believes. On the contrary, 
Europe will have to receive from this New World the 
solution of many of her own problems. She will have to 
ask our aid, as she has done already. And it is Amer- 
ica, united, fresh, luxuriant, strong and intelligent, and 
not America at variance, weakened, steeped in blood 



246 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

and hate, that will stretch its hands towards the Old 
World to pay the sacred debt that we contracted with 
her on receiving her inheritance and her civilization. 

I am more than pleased that I have undertaken the 
task of answering your husband's letters. They have 
hurt me, I cannot deny that, but I have understood that 
they are the crystallization of an estimate very general 
in Latin America. What encourages me is the thought 
that perhaps you have meditated deeply on these prob- 
lems and that you have duly appreciated all I have told 
you. 

I must confess that I have many times been tempted 
to write to your husband. You cannot imagine how 
desirious I am to know him, how I wish to converse with 
him regarding all these grave problems. 

I want to ask his pardon personally for having in- 
truded in his correspondence and to explain to him that 
I have been animated by the best intentions. I am sure, 
madam, that you have understood my purpose and that 
you have read with sympathy everything I have had to 

Your Friend of the Other Continent. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE UGHT OF TRUTH 

THE anonymous hero of our story, wlio was writ- 
ing from Chicago to his wife in Santiago during 
part of the year 1918, finally received, very 
late, the news that his letters — in which he had com- 
mented unfavorably on men and things in the United 
States — had been supplemented by notes from the censor 
in New York. 

He received in November, at about the time when the 
armistice was signed, the censor's criticisms of his two 
first letters, and by each following steamer he continued 
to receive, one after the other, the further comments on 
his letters to his wife. 

Of course, in the subsequent letters he wrote to his 
wife, the Spanish-American ceased to disparage the 
country that was sheltering him. Now, it was he who 
was subjected to criticism for the observations he had 
made. These notes of the censor arrived after he had 
had the time and the opportunity to observe more closely 
and to understand better many things that he had 
judged at first sight too superficially. 

The sudden ending of the war provided him with 
much food for reflection. He witnessed in Chicago the 
delirium of popular ebullition when the news of peace 
arrived. The people lost all notion of propriety, intoxi- 
cated to frenzy with the elixir of victory. And why? 

247 



248 THE GULF OF 3IISUNDERSTANDING 

Had he not believed, when he saw the enthusiasm with 
which this country gave itself over to preparation for 
w^ar that they were going to fight because war meant 
good business for the nation? And now that the war 
had ended so suddenly, demolishing at one blow great 
business enterprises, why this delight? Would not 
everybody lose by it? Could it mean that this country 
really loved peace? And did it mean that the nation 
had made war, with much sacrifice of blood and money, 
only for love of justice ? 

When he saw clearly that this country had no inten- 
tion of claiming any indemnity from the enemy; when 
he saw that many newspapers even recommended that 
the United States should make to Belgium, France and 
Italy a gift of the millions that it had loaned them, 
he began to understand that this country had not fought 
to earn other people's money, but to mitigate other peo- 
ple's suffering. 

The wealthy Chilean landowner had come to the 
United States with the purpose of selling the valuable 
copper deposits that he had discovered on his extensive 
holdings in one of the central provinces of his country. 
Pie had brought along with him reports and plans made 
by the most famous experts of the United States. 

While the war was going on, business men had listened 
to his proposition and had shown some interest; but all 
of them had said that it would be necessary to wait for 
peace. It was true that copper would then go down in 
value, but, for the duration of the w^ar, it was absurd to 
think of installing this new plant in Chile, since it could 
not be made productive for some years, that is, not until 
after peace had been declared. 

The most hopeful prospect arising out of the many 



TEE LIGHT OF TRUTH 249 

interviews with capitalists which he had had was one 
in negotiation with a gentleman of Chicago, John H. 
Chasewell; but even he could make no promises before 
the end of the war. 

*'Just now we can think of only one thing: winning 
the war," he had said at the acutest stage of hostilities. 
Even he, in spite of his advanced age, was thinking of 
enlisting, if circumstances should demand his quota of 
blood. 

Once the war was over, everj^thing changed. The cap- 
italist paid close attention to his proposition, receiving 
him several days in succession at his office. 

While they talked the visitor's attention was drawn 
to the portrait of a beautiful woman, which was stand- 
ing on the desk. He had noticed in the offices of many 
business men framed photographs of their wives, and he, 
who adored his wife, had never thought of placing her 
likeness on the desk at his office. Nobody did this in his 
country; indeed it would invite ironical remarks on 
the part of his friends. 

Then he looked penetratingly at this Yankee, young 
at the age of fifty, healthy, virile, merry, a golf player, 
so human in the midst of his figures, his statistics and his 
plans — this big boy who often referred to his wife in 
conversation as a lover speaks of his sweetheart. 

''No, Mrs. Chasewell believes that the Latin Ameri- 
can workmen are as human as ours are, and much more 
sensitive," he said on one occasion; and when he men- 
tioned his wife, he looked at the portrait as if he were 
formally introducing her. 

On one occasion Mr. Chasewell invited the Chilean 
to luncheon, and this was the beginning of a certain 
intimacy that disposed the American to later invite the 



250 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

Chilean landowner to dinner in his own home. There 
he became acquainted with Mrs. Chasewell ; and there a 
door was suddenly thrown open to him that until then 
had been closed — the entry to a home in this country. 

Later the Chilean gentleman became acquainted with 
many other homes and many other ladies, who soon 
convinced him how greatly he had erred in his general- 
izations about the American woman. 

He remembered having read in an American book 
about the meeting between a citizen of the United States 
and a Japanese in Tokio. In the course of their con- 
versation, which had for its theme the Land of the Eis- 
ing Sun, the Japanese asked : ' * Have you seen her yet ? ' ' 
*'If I have seen her? Whom?" asked the American. 
'*Ah! If you had seen her, you would not have asked 
who. . . /' 

They met again some weeks later. The American had 
seen the marvelous, the indescribable Fujiyama — with 
the summit capped with snow, reflecting the sun's rays 
in a thousand different tones of color — which rises thou- 
sands of feet above the plain, unique and incomparable 
in grandeur and beauty. It is not strange that the na- 
tives speak of her as something unique in the world. 

Months passed by, and the Japanese, now on a visit 
to the United States, sought from the Pacific to the At- 
lantic something that might compare in beauty with the 
Holy Mountain of Nippon. He saw the Josemite Val- 
ley, the Rocky Mountains, the National Parks and Ni- 
agara, but nowhere could he find the one distinctive 
thing like *'her" of Fujiyama. As he gradually made 
friends, American houses were opened to him, and one 
day, at last, he exclaimed joyfully: *'I have found the 



THE LIGHT OF TRUTH 251 

marvel of America, it is the home, the domestic hearth, 
and it is more beautiful than ours." 
*^ He was right. When the traveler in the United States 
sees the facades of the houses, when from the train he 
perceives the villas in country towns, he sees only brick 
and stone; but he does not see, he does not imagine — 
unless he has had the privilege to know it — the home that 
is inside, where true happiness reigns, where the husband 
is not the lord and master of his wife as in a South 
American home, where the children have their own in- 
dividuality. 

The American home is not confined by the four walls 
of the house ; it radiates beyond. The great number of 
institutions for social betterment which inundate Chi- 
cago are extensions, prolongations of the American home 
interior. The woman of this country is not satisfied 
with being the mother of her children; she seems to 
wish to be a mother to all the destitute of the community. 

One afternoon, when passing through Thirty-ninth 
Street, near the Lake, he saw that a public block-party 
was being held in the middle of the road. A band was 
playing on a temporary platform. His companion, who 
was from the quarter, told him that this was one of the 
dances given there twice a w^eek. It was free, perfectly 
free, without formalities of any kind, to any one who 
cared to take part. 

''This district of Oakland," he was told, ''is for us 
a village in the middle of Chicago. Ours is a vast 
metropolis, but it is our pleasure to preserve an air of 
village life in each district. We even publish a little 
newspaper, for free distribution, giving the family news 
of the section. In this way we get to know one another ; 
not one among us need feel isolated. The local theater 



252 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

gives an "amateurs' niglit" once a week, when neigh- 
bors meet to be entertained with music, song and other 
amusements. A prize is awarded by the public, accord- 
ing to their taste. The winner is he or she who receives 
the most applause. In this way we also stimulate in- 
diviHual talent." 

All this was a revelation to him. He began to under- 
stand that a city cannot be known to one who lives in 
the best hotel, and makes his observations from his bal- 
cony. This spirit of association within each quarter of 
the city desiring to preserve the aspect of a country 
town was carried to even greater lengths in other cities 
like Cincinnati, where they were making of each block a 
social unit. 

Mrs. Chasewell had received him with infinite cor- 
diality. 

**I am very much interested to hear about life in 
Latin American countries," she told him on one occa- 
sion. "My husband has valuable mining interests in 
Honduras, and I have accompanied him twice on his 
visits there. It is a country with inexhaustible mining 
resources, but what has most interested me are the peo- 
ple. I help him in the social aspects of his work. I 
do not believe that American capital has any right to 
exploit the natural resources of Latin America, if it is 
not willing to face the social responsibilities of all capi- 
tal invested for profit. The foundation of commercial, 
industrial or mining enterprises exclusively for the sake 
of money itself is to-day a thing of the past in my coun- 
try. To make money is evidently the aim of our busi- 
ness, of course; but if a concern does not care for the 
happiness of the men it employs; if it does not raise 
them to a higher plane of life ; if it does not cooperate 



THE LIGHT OF TEVTE 253 

"with them to promote the welfare of the community, 
then that concern is held unworthy of public esteem. ' ' 

The Chilean's attention had already been called to 
some items in the estimate of expenses that Mr. Chase- 
well had made for the installation of a copper smelting 
plant on his property. He had put aside five million 
dollars for workmen's dwellings, sanitation work and 
recreation, in spite of the detailed reports in his posses- 
sion describing the humble standard of life and the very 
low wages to which the men were accustomed. 

* * No, ' ' Mr. Chasewell had told him ; "if we are going 
tb do big business there, we must consider the work- 
man as a partner who is entitled to the wages, health, 
happiness and education constituting his rightful share 
in the profits yielded by the work." We are not going 
to sweat men, but machines, by means of intelligent or- 
ganization. "We shall raise men to a higher plane. This 
is what is going on through all Latin America. Wher- 
ever we have brought our industry, we are paying higher 
wages than before, providing better dwellings ... we 
educate." 

The man of fortune is less of an egoist in this coun- 
try than in any other. The case of the millionaire 
Ford, the big automobile manufacturer, who, when tak- 
ing contracts for the Government during the war, un- 
dertook to retain not a cent of profit — a promise which 
he lived up to — was but one shining example among 
thousands of other similar cases. Our hero brought to 
mind an incident of the Civil War that he had read not 
long before. President Lincoln, in his distress, calls 
Vanderbilt, the millionaire, and says to him : 

''The Merrimac has anchored outside James River 
Bay. How much do you ask for capturing her?" 



254 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

*'I ask nothing, because I do not speculate in my 
country ^s misfortune. In two days the Merrimac will 
be in your hands, ' ' answers the millionaire ; and in thir- 
ty-six hours this promise was fulfilled. 

On a larger, equal or smaller scale there were thou- 
sands and thousands of Vanderbilts in the war of lib- 
erty against slavery, just as on a larger, equal or smaller 
scale, there were thousands and thousands of Fords in 
this other war of democracy against autocracy. The few 
profiteers were isolated black stains in a blue sky, dis- 
playing to better effect the beautiful majesty of the 
firmament. 

He had now had occasion to see how the whole nation 
sacrificed its personal interests before the nation 's altar ; 
all, the poor and the rich, women and men. 

He had heard other Spanish-Americans say, before 
the United States went into the war, when they saw 
the invasion and the horrors of Belgium and when the 
Germans sunk the Lusitania, that the great American 
democracy would not go to war because its business re- 
quired peace. In pursuit of the dollar they would toler- 
ate disgrace unworthy of a great nation. Then it was 
peace for money's sake. 

And later, when this country joined the belligerents, 
he had heard it said that this move was also for the 
sake of money, that they already had loaned so many 
millions of dollars to the Allies, had extended so much 
credit, that they also were obliged to lend a helping 
hand as a measure of prudence. And this Latin Ameri- 
can began to understand that he had been blindly and 
passively following the current of opinion that syste- 
matically condemned this country, do what it might. 
Nothing easier, nothing more comfortable, no philosophy 



THE LIGHT OF TEUTH 255 

»nore, simple, than to form a priori, an opinion abont an 
individual or a nation and later reconcile to this preju- 
dice all the actions of the individual or nation. This is 
much easier than to analyze carefully and then to mod- 
ify the former point of view. 

Had he not done this very thing? When discussing 
this country, had he not always tried to adapt his judg- 
ment to the preconceived impressions which had been 
stereotyped in his mind? 

Now, when he meditated upon the letter to his wife 
in which he had told her that this country was mate- 
rialistic, egoistic, a mere dollar hunting ground, the fig- 
ures of the big multi-millionaires who cheerfully paid a 
tax of more than sixty per cent, of their profits to win the 
war; the figures of the large and small contributors, of 
all those who relinquished their profits and of all those 
who gave their time to win the war ; of those who went 
as soldiers to give their blood, and the women who went 
as nurses to the battlefields to win the war ; the figure of 
a whole nation of one hundred million people assuming 
the heroic attitude of a sublime altruism, all this an- 
swered him: 

''No, we are not egoists, we are not materialists." 

Not only were they not egoists, but they had carried 
their idealism to the point of being incorrigible dream- 
ers, the Don Quixotes of the world. 

When he thought of the letter that he had written in 
which he told his wife that this country was not really 
a democracy, that an oligarchy was in power which im- 
poses on the people its judgment and will, he began to 
see that the muster of directors was not here a heredi- 
tary body, as in Germany, or as in the Latin American 
republics. A number of capable men ruled here, but 



256 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

these were recruited from the ranks of every social 
stratum. Here was no governing caste ; new men, whose 
families had not figured on the public stage in previous 
generations, were elevated to high rank in the adminis- 
tration, ascending by the white marble stairs of their 
o^vn merits. And what happened in the official admin- 
istration of the whole nation, from the presidency of the 
Kepublic — with its Lincolns and its Wilsons — was also 
the case with regard to the administration of private 
fortunes; laborers of yesterday — Carnegie, Ford, Edi- 
son — were the emj)loyers of to-day. Fortune is a social 
force, and its handling is given automatically by the 
nation to the most capable. He saw that the same dem- 
ocratic principle was applied in private life, in thou- 
sands and thousands of clubs, associations and civic, 
religious, athletic and recreative organizations. 

As a democracy this country was not perfect ; it had 
defects; but the ideal was there as the goal which all 
wished to reach. A remedy is being found for every 
evil. Nothing is perfect; but comparing this country 
with others, is not this the most nearly perfect of democ- 
racies ? 

And, had he not been mistaken in believing that an 
aristocratic government like that of Germany was more 
efficient than a democratic government like this? Was 
it well that the countries of Latin America be governed 
by hereditary castes? Was it not fully demonstrated 
that a democratic government is not only fairer, but 
also more efficient? What had not the United States 
accomplished in eleven months of war ? 

What a fine spirit of discipline there was in this de- 
mocracy! When the people were asked — asked, not or- 
dered — to save gasoline because it was needed by the 



TEE LIGHT OF TRUTH 257 

government, and to avoid riding in motor cars on Sun- 
days, except in cases of extreme necessity, did lie not 
see that in Chicago the request of the government had 
more effect than an imperial ukase? The few automo- 
biles seen in Michigan Avenue carried a placard on 
which was written: *' Doctor." 

It is not admitted here that the government is the 
master of the people ; it is considered to be the servant 
of the people. The government is the representative of 
the popular will. Before the Christian era kings con- 
sulted the Pythonesses of the Oracles in order to find 
out what they should do to govern with wisdom and jus- 
tice. In this country the Delphian Oracle of the Sanc- 
tuary of Apollo is the American people; Mount Par- 
nassus stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic, frona 
the frontiers of Canada to those of Mexico, and in it 
each citizen is the Sibyl who tells his lawgivers ho-jv to 
govern with wisdom and justice. 

And these soothsayers of the twentieth century, who 
have commenced to mumble their advice with the same 
vagueness as that of the ancient oracles, are noAV speak- 
ing every day with more clarity, more knowledge and 
more intelligence, because more and more the means of 
self culture are being placed within the reach of all. 

AYith the land of his birth before his mind's eye, he 
concentrated his thoughts upon what the education of 
the masses in his country would really mean: a new 
era in which the number of those able to give in alHssimo 
the full measure of their support to the cause of na- 
tional progress would be steadily {?% crescendn, until the 
country was indeed a Commonwealth. The An^^Io-Saxon. 
word had come naturally and unconsciously to this Span- 
ish-American, because it had no equivalent in Spanish. 



258 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

At other times he would call to mind the letter in 
which he had denounced to his wife the imperialism 
of the United States, and then he remembered the pa- 
tient attitude of this country in face of the outrages 
inflicted on Americans by some of the rebel factions of 
Mexico, the independence they had given Cuba, the in- 
dependence which, in good faith^ was offered to the 
Philippines, and the emphatic declarations made during 
the war that there would be no annexations, although 
this country had been a decisive factor in the victory. 
All these facts seemed to shout in his ear : 

''No, we are not imperialists, we have no desire to 
be. "We wish only to be a great country, prosperous 
and happy, and to help all other countries, as well as 
we can, also to attain prosperity and happiness." 

There were elements of imperialism in the country, 
and some of the newspapers were also imperialistic in 
their tendency. How could it be otherwise ? In a coun- 
try of a hundred million souls, every one of them with 
liberty to give an opinion, secure in the knowledge that 
it would obtain a hearing, and where there is an inex- 
haustible faith in one's fellow man, be he a college grad- 
uate or a yokel, was it not to be expected that imperial- 
ists might be found, not to say sorcerers, occultists and 
futurists ? 

When he thought of what he had written so bitterly 
reproaching the United States for its attitude toward 
the negroes, he could not help recalling the affrays be- 
tween whites and blacks that had taken place in the 
country during the year of his residence in it. But at 
the same time he had to consider very closely what this 
grafting of the negro race in a country of whites really 
signified. 



TEE LIGHT OF TRUTH 259 

He recollected a conversation he had had with a negro 
who had attained national celebrity as a thinker. It 
was an intimate talk in which the negro spoke with the 
utmost sinceritj^ 

''Yes, I have white blood in my veins," he said. 
** Every negro who has distinguished himself — like 
Booker T. Washington, for instance — has had white 
blood in his veins. The thoroughbred negro is of a race 
inferior, both intellectually and morally, to that of the 
white. The process of moral advancement, until he at- 
tains the level of the civilization under w^hose protection 
he has been received, must entail a long period of strug- 
gle and suffering. I have faith in the future of the 
negro race, but only because it enjoys here wonderful 
facilities for improvement." 

One day, getting off a trolley-car, he saw a man sur- 
prised in the act of stealing a lady's purse. When the 
thief saw that he was caught, he threw the purse on the 
ground, but the crowd which had gathered round 
shouted at him : ' ' Pick it up ! Pick it up ! " as they pre- 
pared to take him to the nearby police-station. 

The pickpocket was by no means inclined to appear 
before the police with the stolen object in his hand, and 
it was a sight to see the threatening fists of the crowd 
raised to strike as they cried again : ' ' Pick it up ! Pick 
it up!" 

These and other similar incidents had given him the 
clew which explained — though it did not excuse — lynch- 
ing in this country. These nameless throngs which 
lynched were not thirsty for blood, they were athirst 
for justice, and had not — in the moment of passion — 
enough control over their actions to await the slow but 
sure march of official justice. 



260 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

And was it not foolish of him to have written to his 
wife declaiming against the right to vote in the United 
States being given to women ? During one year that he 
had lived in this country he had been able to see that 
women here were a much more intense social factor than 
in his own country. Certainly, in the countries of Latin 
America there was a smaller proportion of women 
equipped for civic life, and it would be inopportune to 
grant to all — the prepared and the unprepared — the 
right to take part in public affairs. The same thing, 
however, applied to man. But even in his own country, 
was not woman interesting herself more and more in the 
great national problems? 

He had come to the conclusion that, undoubtedly, in a 
democracy, however nearly perfect it may be, it is need- 
ful to place certain restrictions on the right to vote. 
No insane person should vote, nor children ; nor any un- 
cultured illiterate; certain requisites should be insisted 
upon before allowing an individual to exercise his rights 
as a citizen. But these restrictions, as well as these 
rights, should be applied impartially to men and women. 

Often some incident or a new acquaintance would 
make him think of matters about which he had written 
to his wife, and he found himself comparing them with 
other analagous incidents and other persons whose ac- 
quaintance he had made before. Familiarity with the 
interior of a happy home, acquaintance with a married 
couple, of which the woman enjoys complete liberty and 
is faithful and sincere, and whose husband loves her and 
respects — in every detail — her dignity as a woman, led 
him to understand the felicity of other homes of which 
he had had a glimpse. He then began to see that it is 
-^the exceptional cases, the big scandals, that make most 



TEK LIGHT OF TTWTE 261 

noise, that attract most attention, that are most fre- 
quently mentioned in the newspapers, and that most 
largely contribute to the pernicious hr^ it of generaliza- 
tion common to the ill-informed. 

And if marriage is a failurj, as sometimes happens 
in all parts of the world, with all peoples, with all races, 
either because the man is unworthy of his wife or she 
unworthy of him, what is more natural than a desire 
for freedom on the part of the spouse who has been 
an innocent victim, instead of a perpetual widowhood? 

With regard to this question of women's rights, not 
only had he been confuted by the censor of New York; 
not only had the facts shown the fallacy of his argu- 
ments when he had later begun to understand this coun- 
try, but even his ov.n wife disagreed with him. "All 
you tell me about the United States," she had written, 
**is so interesting, and the censor's notes have made it 
doubly so. I must say very frankly that your letters 
often puzzle me, and sometimes — as for instance with 
regard to all your references to the question of women's 
rights — I am less inclined to take sides with you than 
with the censor. We are a very happy couple, you and I, 
but this is not the general rule. The condition of woman 4, 
in all Latin America is a continental tragedy. I can 
easily imagine how much happier woman is in the 
United States and how man is happier in consequence. 
You think that your letters would cure me of my longing 
to know the United States, but they have had the con- 
trary effect. That country attracts me now much more 
than Europe." 

And something that all his life had seemed to him 
most natural, most logical and most advisable for the 
cause of national morality, was that the Church be sup- 



262 THE GVLF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

ported by the State. The people themselves are not 
generous enough to pay on their own initiative the ex- 
penses of the church — he had always believed. The 
state must exact from all citizens the payment of con- 
tributions for the support of the most important services 
of the nation: safety, justice and education. Are not 
religion and fear of God more important than these ? 

Only when he saw that in the United States the Catho- 
lics were more devout and sincerely religious than in his 
own country, w^hen he saw that they supported their own 
Church with more liberality than the state in Chile had 
ever shown in supporting the national cult, he began to 
think the matter over very carefully, thereby divesting 
himself of many prejudices that had become incrusted in 
his mental personality. He began to understand that it 
would be much better for Catholicism in his country — 
as in all Latin America — to retain no connection between 
Church and State. The money which the State gave to 
the Church, the budget estimates for the cult, that every 
year gave rise to a sectarian dispute in Congress, would 
be easily covered by public initiative, and the people 
would be more intensely and sincerely religious by the 
mere fact of their contributing voluntarily to the sup- 
port of the Church. 

He had often to take his meals without wine because 
in certain restaurants none was to be had. At first this 
seemed to him an unheard-of thing, but he had to put 
up with it. Sometimes he was invited to dine at a 
house where only water was served, which seemed to him 
nothing less than a crime, a breach of hospitality. On 
the occasion of a short trip that he had made to a dry 
State, he spent two weeks without tasting a drop of wine. 
The first day he found this deprivation unbearable, the 



TEE LIGHT OF TRUTH 263 

second day He was able to put up with it better, and 
though at the end of his journey he was naturally anx- 
ious to return to Chicago in order to take his meals with 
wine, he was surprised to note how each day it had been 
easier for him to enjoy a meal with water instead of 
wine. 

Personal convenience contributes greatly to every- 
body's system of philosophy. "We rarely find individ- 
uals willing to reason and act on the strength of the ab- 
stract, eliminating their personal convenience in order 
to formulate their social or political creed; and there 
is nothing very strange in the fact that our Spanish- 
American vineyard proprietor should begin to look with 
a certain modicum of sympathy — timid sympathy, it is 
true — ^upon the prohibition movement of this country, 
seeing that the land he owned not only could produce 
grapes, which drop by drop had distilled a fortune for 
him, but also possessed, hidden in its bowels, copper, for 
the exploitation of which sober men would be needed. 
This line of thought influenced him subconsciously. 

And this campaign against alcohol was beginning to 
take root in Latin America. In Mexico, Brazil and in 
Chile the governments had been taking steps which were 
bringing them nearer to prohibition. The United States 
would soon be on a basis of prohibition ; the great experi- 
ment was about to be made throughout the country, and 
upon the result of this experiment depended the fate 
of whisky, wine and beer in Latin America. Every coun- 
try in the world is a social laboratory, and it is best that 
all should not make the same experiment at the same 
time. Germany and Austria-Hungary had been experi- 
menting in autocracy; the United States were experi- 
menting in democracy. And the world had learned its 



264 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

lesson. Europe was experimenting with official prosti- 
tution, the United States with the suppression of pros- 
titution. Latin America experiments with the negation 
of women's rights, the United States with their ex- 
altation. France experiments with the glass of wine at 
mealtimes, the United States with the glass of milk. 

In no other country are so many social experiments 
made as in the United States because here each State is 
also a laboratory within the nation. Here there is per- 
sonality for the individual — man, woman and child; 
there is personality for the community, for the city and 
for the State. And in no other country are the experi- 
ments being made with more faith and more vehemence. 
Every new idea, every new proposal which has any prob- 
ability of success is given an opportunity to make good. 

This Spanish-American gentleman had believed that 
the United States occupied a lower place than the coun- 
tries of Central and South America in the matter of 
culture, habit and social manners ; but, just after he had 
received from Chile the notes that the censor in New 
York had added to the letter in which he spoke about 
this subject to his wife, an incident had occurred which 
caused him to alter his mind on the subject. A young 
American who spoke Spanish, but who had never been 
in a Spanish-speaking country, told him that on a visit 
to New York he had attended several times at the Span- 
ish Theater of that city in order to exercise his ear in 
the language; and he added that he had never seen a 
display of worse behavior. The audience shouted such 
impertinent vulgarities at the actors that they had made 
him blush as never before in his life. 

That theater is frequented exclusively by Spaniards 
and Latin Americans, and the young man from Chicago 



THE LIGHT OF TRUTH 265 

had come to the conclusion that the people of these coun- 
tries were habitually coarse. The hero of our story had 
to take it upon himself for the first time the defense of 
Latin Americans from such attacks, and to maintain that 
the theater which the young man from Chicago had at- 
tended did not cater to the best people from these coun- 
tries. But the very fact that he had to undertake this 
defense made him think that he, in his turn, had perhaps 
jumped at conclusions with the same undue haste as the 
person whose inferences he was now setting right. 

There were uncultured, uneducated, badly behaved 
people everywhere, in that America and in this Amer- 
ica ; with the difference that in Latin America the social 
classes are so widely separated amongst themselves that 
the well bred man has no opportunity of criticizing the 
vulgar herd. It is an unheard-of thing over there that a 
millionaire should seat himself alongside a workman, as 
might easily happen here. 

The censor's argument concerning the letter in which 
he had spoken of the want of good manners, of courtesy 
in the United States had impressed him greatly. Here 
was no privileged, hereditary class which inherited its 
social manners with its name and fortune. Here a 
workman could become a man of importance in the land, 
often in a few years' time. In this democracy there were 
to be found rough men among the upper classes ; whereas 
in Latin America this was not the case because stability 
of caste v/as there the rule. The description of the 
sinking of the Titanic had moved him acutely. This at 
least was evidently the truth : those men who might per- 
haps not yield their seats to ladies in a trolley-car were 
quick to give their life-belts to women in a wreck at sea. 

One afternoon, after having visited Hull House, and 



266 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

after a delightful chat with Jane Addams, right in the 
settlement, where he had tea with this wonderful woman 
and with other women who worked with her, he returned 
to his hotel and seated in his room up on the tenth floor, 
with his eyes fixed upon the lake, there came to his 
mind a deeply felt experience of his life. It was an 
intimate story about a pretty girl of his own social 
circle, to whom he had done irreparable harm by airing 
an injurious and unjustified opinion about her. Later, 
he came to know her intimately and became convinced 
of his lamentable error. 

Why did this story come to his mind? Because he 
was beginning to believe that the United States was a 
second girl about whom he had expressed injurious and 
unjustified opinions. It was not so easy to become 
acquainted with a country as with a person, but in fact 
a country has also individual characteristic features; 
and the ugly conviction was already dawning on him 
that he had been slandering unconsciously a country 
not only worthy of the greatest respect and admiration, 
but worthy also of being imitated by the sister countries 
of America for the good of the entire continent. 

Moreover, the successful conclusion of his business 
here, the sale of those deposits which left him the pos- 
sessor of a large fortune and a stockholder in the new 
enterprise, influenced subconsciously the new condition 
of his mind in observing, judging and generalizing. In 
the transaction of this business he had been treated with 
the most rigorous honesty and the most exquisite affabil- 
ity ; his country was spoken of with the utmost respect ; 
it was proposed to remunerate generously the men that 
were going to be employed and to provide good living 



THE LIGHT OF TRUTH 267 

conditions for them. All this also helped him to get rid 
of his former prejudiced viewpoint. 

The day was approaching when he must return to his 
native land. Before leaving he was to stop for a few 
weeks in New York, a city with which he was not per- 
sonally acquainted, since on arriving in this country he 
had landed in New Orleans and had visited only the 
Southern, Western and Central States. 

In New York he took an apartment in the Waldorf- 
Astoria, and from there made short trips to Washing- 
ton, Boston and Philadelphia. Two days before he left, 
General Pershing arrived in New York. The city was 
en fete. He also was moved to see from his window 
on Fifth Avenue the "march past" of soldiers who had 
been led by a simple, unassuming man, a genuine type 
of the people whose flag he defended. 

The afternoon before his departure, while engaged 
with packing in his room, he was called to the telephone. 
A lady wished to see him. He went down and received 
the lady in one of the large saloons on the main floor. 

"Sir ," began the young lady, whose big eyes 

irradiated sympathy, "I have not the pleasure of know- 
ing you personally; only by chance I discovered that 
you were here, and I have not hesitated in coming to 
ask you for a moment's conversation. IMy name is 
Mabel Jones. It was I who in the Censor's Office of 
the Government read and added comments to the letters 
which 3^ou wrote your wife." 

The gentleman's surprise was such that he could not 
control himself sufficiently to hide it. 

"Please sit down, madam, your visit is a great pleas- 
ure for me." 

' ' I want to ask your pardon personally. ..." 



268 TEE GULF OF 3II8UNDERSTANDING 

*'But it is I who should ask your pardon and thank 
you. I have contracted a debt toward you which I do 
not know how to repay. I have read all the notes with 
which you supplemented my letters, and they have been 
a decisive factor in showing me how I should judge of 
this country. I beg your pardon, madam, for the errors 
into which I had fallen/' 

She smiled. 

''Is it to one who is convinced, or to a Latin gen- 
tleman, traditionally gallant with ladies, that I am 
speaking ? ' ' 

The elegant figure, the delicate features, the gentle 
manners and the instinctive aristocratic grace that this 
man had inherited from his forefathers served but to 
corroborate the preconception that Miss Jones had 
formed of him. He, smilingly, but giving to his tone 
and to the slight movement of his head all the attri- 
butes of conviction, rejoined: 

* ' A convert, madam, and also a repentant sinner. ' ' 

The conversation swept quickly from one topi' to 
another, speaking of imperialism, of democracy, of 
woman suffrage, of education, of marriage and of di- 
vorce. Now that they had reached the same level, it 
was easy to understand each other. 

In the midst of a well dressed crowd in constant move- 
ment, amid thousands of voices muffled by carpets and 
curtains, surrounded by the scent of flowers and the 
melodious strains of the orchestra, they seemed to be as 
isolated as the monks of St. Gothard; and as the sun 
bathes the mountain tops, the light of truth bathed the 
spirit of this Spanish- American. 

The conversation took them so far, that night began 



TEE LIGHT OF TEUTH 269 

to fall without either of them noticing the flight of time. 
"When he saw how late it was, he asked her : 

** Would you be so kind as to accept an invitation to 
dinner ? It is the first and last opportunity that I shall 
have to see you.*' 

And she, knowing that he was leaving on the follow- 
ing day, and having her message still untold, did not 
scruple to accept the invitation. They were only a few 
steps away from the spacious dining room of the hotel, 
with its windows looking out upon Fifth Avenue, very 
near one of which they took their places. 

He repeated in different ways how very grateful he 
was to iMiss Jones for all the trouble she had taken, ex- 
pressing himself as doubtful of ever being able to recom- 
pense her trouble. 

''You can repay me by granting a favor I wish to 
ask you." 

*'It will be a pleasure for me to have the opportunity 
to do anything for you. ' ' 

''My supplements to your letters have contributed, 
you tell me, to make you better capable of understand- 
ing this country. I think that by publishing them to- 
gether with your letters, which are a revelation of the 
way in which many Latin Americans judge the United 
States, others might also be induced to learn the truth 
about my country. I doubt whether the perusal of these 
letters will alone suffice to definitely convince anybody 
with deep-rooted convictions toward a contrary opinion, 
but they may serve as a compass to direct the mind, 
as a help to understanding. Would you give me per- 
mission to publish your letters?'^ 

"With the greatest pleasure, although I would prefer 
that you do not publish my name. Or if you wish my 



270 THE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

name to appear, you must give me permission to change 
the form of the letters, which I wrote as if I were speak- 
ing freely, alone with my wife.'' 

''Oh! That is just something that must be preserved. 
It could very rarely happen that any one would write 
in that way for our public, censuring our nation; but 
you have left on record in those letters the form and 
substance of opinions held by many, very many Latin 
Americans regarding my country. There are writers 
among them who have spoken with still more rancor of 
my country in books, magazines, newspapers and public 
lectures. These opinions are mistaken, sometimes pur- 
posely, and evidently inspired by bad faith, but most of 
the time they are due to ignorance. At all events, it is 
advisable to know these conceptions in order to combat 
them. It makes no difference that your name is with- 
held. You are a Latin American, a representative 
Latin American of the highest class of those countries. 
That is what matters." 

"Thanks for your good opinion. You may use those 
letters as you see fit. ' ' 

All New York seemed to be passing through the Ave- 
nue, the most imposing artery in the world. From their 
seats, the American of the North and the American of 
the South were as if seated on the banks of a swollen 
human river. 

''Yes, I have arrived at the true comprehension of 
the significance and beauty of democracy, and I believe 
that this country, more than any other, is striving whole- 
heartedly that democratic ideals may prevail," he con- 
tinued gravely. ' ' This nation has the biggest collective 
soul in the world. I told you before that I was a re- 
I)entant sinner, a convert. I might say that it is an- 



TEE LIGHT OF TRUTH 271 

other man whom you are meeting now. I have been 
transformed^ I have a different soul in the same body. 
Not only have I changed my mode of thinking with re- 
gard to your country ; I have acquired a new philosophy 
regarding many of the cardinal problems of life. 

As he spoke, his eyes seemed to shine with a new light, 
the illumination of awakening. It was more than the 
awakening of a man; it was the awakening of a conti- 
nent. 

' ' Of all the things you have said to your wife in those 
letters, of all your judgments, which appears to you now 
as the most mistaken? Which of them do you regret 
most ? ' ' asked Miss Jones. 

This question delighted the Chilean gentleman. 
Though all that he had said in the letters was liable to 
put him out of countenance before an American lady, 
there was one thing which mortified him more than the 
rest. 

*'What I most regret to have said is that the American 
woman is not a woman, but a neutral being, and that I 
would not have married one of them if there had been no 
other women in the world. They are charming." 

''1 might have expected that answer," she said smil- 
ingly. ' ' Politeness is second nature to you Latin Ameri- 
cans. ' * 

*'I admire this country," he went on, seeing that he 
need no further insist in his apology. ^'I think you are 
giving a lesson to the whole of our America ; but do you 
not think that there is a real social menace, a danger 
for democracy, in this popular ferment, in these ideas of 
communism, of bolshevism, that fill the air in your coun- 
try?" 

'The American people, on the 



272 TBE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

whole, believe in democracy. Foreign elements, which 
we have in more abundance than any other nation, have 
come to preach here a revolutionary socialism which is at 
variance with our principles. There is but one way to 
play the game of life, and indeed all games, whether they 
are of the mind or of the muscle. Be it chess or base- 
ball, both sides begin with the same elements. The 
two castles, the two bishops, the two knights of one 
player can move from square to square in the same way 
as the castles, the bishops and the knights of the other 
player. And in baseball the balls and bats are the 
same for both teams. But the intelligence, the plan of 
campaign of one chess player or one baseball captain 
is superior to that of the other, and sooner or later a 
master stroke puts the balance in his favor. The de- 
feated party is not beaten definitely; more study on 
his part, more practice, more attention, may see him the 
winner to-morrow. Good sportsmen go on with the 
game; as losers they join in the applause for the victors, 
who reap the laurels won by their efforts. Later on 
these honors may be theirs. 

*'Thus, in a democracy we want the game of life to 
begin under equal conditions for all. The public school, 
the library and the college are within the reach of every 
one. The winners are those who, with more effort and 
more intelligence, move their pawns to the best advan- 
tage. All have a chance to win on a larger or smaller 
scale. "We must play the game. The distinctive token 
of victory differs according to the game that is being 
plaj^ed. In chess it is checkmate, in baseball the home 
run, in art the glory, and in business it is money. 

*'But the game must be played, and the laws of the 
game must be respected, which in the case of life are 



THE LIGHT OF TRUTH 273 

the laws dictated by the majority. There must be win- 
ners and losers. And the winners of to-day are not 
necessarily the winners of to-morrow. If the losers are 
in the majority, and if they are not satisfied with the 
rules of the game, they can change them, because the 
fundamental principle of our laws is that they can be 
changed in accordance with the will of the majority.'' 

''And what do the communists want in this game of 
life?'' 

''They want . . . not to play the game. They claim 
that there should be no winners or losers. They want 
it to be established that he who exerts himself, he who 
studies and he who works shall enjoy the same honors 
as he who does not exert himself, or he who does not 
study, or he who does not work ; they claim that Edison 
should receive the same remuneration as the joiner who 
makes a wooden box for the phonograph invented by the 
scientist; they want Carrel to earn as much as a quack 
dentist; they think that Ford should earn the same 
wages as a chauffeur. They would snatch away the 
winning pieces from a chess player who is about to win 
the game. These Utopian and nonsensical pretensions 
are equivalent to an order for the removal of mountains, 
a foolish mandate to raze the Andes or the Rocky Moun- 
tains in order to make of the world an even, level plain. 
This is at variance with the spirit of our country." 

The orchestra filled the room with its melodies. Ele- 
gantly dressed ladies and gentlemen continued coming 
in and occupying all the tables of the large dining room. 
Outside, the Avenue looked like day, with its brilliant 
lights. The human river streamed on in a continuous 
and overflowing torrent. 

"But the men and women of our country," she con- 



274 TEE GULF OF MISUNDERSTANDING 

tinned, ''have confidence in themselves, they wish to 
play the game of life and to continue their efforts in 
the struggle to perfect the laws of the game. ' ' 

At that moment — it was a day of civic celebrations 
and of receptions for great soldiers — the strains of the 
national hymn of the United States were heard, and 
the Chilean gentleman felt himself overpowered by al- 
most the same emotion that always moved him when 
hearing his own national hymn. He rose immediately, 
even before the rest of the people, and at that moment, 
there, in the heart of New York, he felt that he was in 
a glorious country, which was receiving the men of old 
Europe, and inspiring them with the new energy and 
ideals that a virgin world has to offer. He felt, for the 
first time, the fibers of continental love vibrate ; he had a 
presentiment of the future greatness of all America, and 
he understood that he must be animated by a spirit of 
love, fraternity and mutual intelligence, in order to take 
his part in the fulfillment of the great destinies of the 
New World that was to be a world made new. 

They were an American of the North and an Ameri- 
can of the South, educated in two different continents, 
with different idiosyncrasies. They were two souls, sym- 
bolical of two different races which had come from Eu- 
rope three centuries ago, and were occupying different 
rooms in the same continental palace. During three 
centuries these peoples had merely exchanged visiting 
cards. Only now were they beginning to know each 
other; only now was it dawning upon their minds that 
mutual understanding and cooperation were necessary. 
He would return home, to the side of his wife and 
children who were anxiously waiting for him; she 
would remain here, at the side of those dear to her. 



TEE LIGHT OF TRUTH 275 

Their eyes met; not the eyes of a man and a woman 
lit "Up by passion, but those of one America and the 
other America that understood each other, two con- 
tinents of a new world that had been divorced from 
each other and that wished to be re-united. 



THE END 



3Lt-77-l 



